


The Gaps Between the Stars

by SubparLizard



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Bickering, Bloodletting, Dialogue Heavy, Discussions of Sexual Assault, Dream Flashbacks, Elf Politics, F/M, Humor, Meet the Family, Minor Character Death, Murder Mystery, Mystery, Romantic Fluff, Sexual Content, Unhealthy Relationships, bird death, cosmic horror, depictions of violence, lots of exposition, lying, terrible life choices
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2019-08-27 15:49:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 131,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16705309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SubparLizard/pseuds/SubparLizard
Summary: “ Solas says, ‘I would not deign to impose upon you if the artifact did not pose a cataclysmic threat to the world. You must give it to me so I may destroy it.’Lavellan gives a spiteful yawn. ‘That sounds like it might put you out of a job.’ In the sun’s sharp white leer Solas watches Lavellan like a starved animal, his cool impassivity beginning to erode. He is desperate and dangerous and together those things excite her. “Six years after the Exalted Council, Solas appears unannounced in the Inquisitor’s bedroom seeking a dangerous artifact long lost to time. When the artifact is stolen, the estranged-lovers-turned-nemeses agree to work together to see it recovered and destroyed. With their own misgivings and distrust following closely on their heels, Lavellan and Solas chase a string of clues across Thedas, through distant memories of Elvhenan, and all the way to the brink of the Void.





	1. The Artifact

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t written anything in a while other than short original joke pieces and some stuff for friends. I realized I wrote like 100 pages of this fic about a year and a half ago before I gave up on it because it wasn’t what I wanted. I was looking through old documents the other day and I found it, read it, and came up with a new direction I think I can steer it in that will take me where I wanted if I can build it right.
> 
> Posted chapters might be subject to minor edits, and I think it’s going to be about thirty chapters long? The first two chapters that I’m posting this morning are very long and full of exposition, but after that they should shorten out.

“What do we know about the artifact?” Inquisitor Lavellan asks. She buzzes with a taut energy, pacing the War Room in restless rounds. Though it is peacetime, she is dressed in her military regalia and she folds her arms, one flesh-and-blood and one prosthetic, over the plat of medals on her chest and drums at her upper arm with the fingers of her real hand. Her sleep the prior night had been uneasy and if she stops moving she fears she may lapse into slumber and her addled obsessions. There is work to be done and the Inquisitor has no time to dwell on dreams about wolves. The morning sun, a terrible bright white in the chill air of the Frostbacks, spills in through the embrasures and illuminates the room with its cutting shafts of light.

Atop the wooden map table an image-sending crystal glows dully in the castle’s stone shade. The magical communicator projects the flickering green forms of Dorian Pavus, Lace Harding, and Chantry scholar Bram Kenric into Skyhold. They stand interspersed with the Inquisitor, her Ambassador, and her Commander though they are halfway across the continent on the Free Marches, hidden away in an Inquisition stronghold in the foothills of the Hundred Pillars mountain range.

In the same emerald luminescence the image of an orb suspended in a glass canister hangs low over the table. The sickeningly familiar artifact is the subject of the hushed conference and a cause for secrecy and concern. “I want to hear it all. Because I, for one, am optimistic about the new orb,” adds the Inquisitor with some flippancy forced into her voice. The joke is not a good one and does little to ease the tension that has settled in the room.

Lavellan has to try and laugh. She feels a creeping dread approaching, as if her nightmares crouch in wait at her periphery. Some days she walks half in a dream stalked by a lone, loping wolf that has made itself manifest at the edge of her consciousness. It circles closer when she sleeps, slowly closing its spiral around her. Last night she thought it might lunge forth and grab in its maw her throat. The lone canid is a monstrous, unnatural beast with multitudinous red eyes belying its ravenous fixation. Lavellan refuses to fear it: once she was a huntress and she will not deign to be prey.

“You’d be the only one. We think that like the Anchor, it’s of Elvish origin,” the spectral figure of Dorian Pavus says, stroking his chin through the immaculately trimmed beard he has grown to match his mustache. Even cast in the reduced colorations of the crystal’s projection, the Inquisitor notices that grey is just beginning to intersperse with the black of his hair at his temples.

“What do you mean, think?” The Commander asks with a grimace. He stares at the orb almost angrily and Lavellan thinks that if he were in a room with the actual item he would seize the thing, throw it to the ground, and smash it to pieces to be rid of it as soon as possible. The former templar has been palpably uncomfortable since news of the artifact surfaced. As typical for one trained in his Order, Cullen has always been suspicious and cautious of magic, and the birth of his first child a couple months prior only served to steel his vigilance. Cullen has suffered torture at the hands of abominations and watched the world torn apart by arcane forces and he is determined to spare his daughter these horrors. “Harding, Kenric, and the Tevinter professor discovered the artifact in an Elvish ruin. It seems like discerning its origin should be cut and dry.”

Dorian repeats somewhat testily, “It was found in an Elvish ruin, yes. And that’s why we think it was made by the ancient elves. But we can’t say for certain. Look at the writing there.” He points to the floating image of the encased orb, which rotates slowly in the midst of the small assemblage. Runes are cut into the surface in an alphabet unfamiliar to Lavellan. The foreign lettering twists in a strange way and seems to morph as the orb is turned. Once she attempts to focus on the transformations they fall static—some sort of optical illusion? Dorian finishes, “I’m no expert, but those aren’t in any known Elvish script.”

Josephine hums in thought as she observes the image before her. The glass box around the orb is intricately held together with thin metallic embellishments that curve and curl down the panes like the roots of a delicate plant. Artifacts and ancient mysteries are largely outside the purview of her diplomatic work, but she regards the object carefully. She offers her ideas: “Are they in some form of Archaic Dwarvish, perhaps? There was contact between the elves and the dwarves, and I have been told there are a number of alphabets for the Archaic Dwarvish language that have fallen out of use. If you don’t have a specialist on dwarves, I do have a number of contacts in Orzammar and Kal Shirok who we might be able to send transcriptions of the runes if you can take them down accurately.”

“Oh, yes! That would be wonderful. And I can speak to some friends of mine at the University,” Professor Kenric responds. The academic seems overwhelmed by the situation but he is as excitable and good-natured as he has always been in his small handful of encounters with the Inquisitor over the years. “Elves are not my specialty at all, but I’m of the opinion that it’s written in some sort of secret cipher. If you look at a handful of sects within the early Orders that became the Chantry around the Divine Age, about half of them have utterly unrecognizable codes to prevent unwanted parties from being able to read internal communications. I don’t see why the ancient elves wouldn’t have similar practices. My Tevinter counterpart thinks it’s likely, too.”

“Speaking of the Tevinter archeologist,” Dorian says, “I’ve been working with Professor Serranus to study the artifact. He has good experience discerning what magic remains on ancient artifacts, but so far our efforts haven’t been, shall we say, forthcoming.” There’s something engrossing about the slow twirling of the image projected by the sending crystal, Lavellan thinks. The orb moves independently in the box, calmly but sporadically as if it were floating in a river while locked into place. “Together we haven’t even determined the alloy of the orb! We did manage to find some information about the case. That’s made of glass infused with Fade material and from the craftsmanship the Professor is just about certain that it was made by elves. It’s very heavily enchanted—to what end, we’re not entirely certain. We’re going to need time to discover more about the case first. After that, we can start our study of the orb itself,” Dorian says. “Serranus and I were discussing the possibility of having other mages help. All of the names he’ll suggest will be Tevinter, of course, but I can try to see if we can reach an agreement about who we might bring on.”

“We can’t thank you enough for traveling out to the site on short notice, Dorian,” Josephine says. “Not many of our research mages on the site are equipped to handle what you’ve taken on, and it is extremely kind of you to drop everything to come to our aide.”

Dorian laughs. “You’re very welcome! I’ll have to say. This is all rather exciting, isn’t it? I was worried I would be bored with the magisterium out of session for the next few months. But what luck, an ancient mystery just fell right into my lap! I’m just glad I wasn’t very far away when my sending crystal lit up with your calls for help.” Dorian had been in the south of Tevinter. Lavellan knows that means the magister was clandestinely meeting with a certain Tal-Vashoth mercenary. Horned giants are an especially unwelcome sight in Tevinter and Dorian must travel to the frontiers or abroad to rendezvous with the Iron Bull. He’s taking time out of his vacation and likely disappointing his lover to help. Dorian sighs, “Besides. I don’t like the idea of an incredibly powerful magical elvish artifact falling into the hands of my countrymen right now. What we have could very well be some sort of,” he fishes for a phrase and seems unsatisfied with what he comes up with, “super-weapon. Right now with all the internal fighting, the possession of one of those is the last thing the Imperium needs. Professor Serranus is a good man of sound judgment and he does deeply care for the wellbeing of our country and its people. I think I may be able to leverage the political situation back home to convince him to allow the Inquisition custody of the item without a fight once we’re done with the preliminary research.”

“You’re doing good work, Dorian,” Lavellan says. Even though the Inquisition now calls the Imperium an ally, the orb will not fall into Tevinter hands if she can help it. This, more even than the research, is what she had called upon Dorian for. When he first assumed his assassinated father’s seats he had been a political pariah. The past several years have seen Dorian become a popular reformer and a powerful voice in the magisterium. Despite the incessant attempts on his life, his countrymen heed his words. Something Dorian said floats to the front of Lavellan’s mind: “How do you know it’s incredibly powerful? You said you can’t find anything out about it.”

“If you would like a more scientific answer, I’m making a bit of an inference from the complexity of the enchantment on the glass. It’s very delicate to the point it has no physical component to its protection and it doesn’t use much energy, but it’s extraordinarily intricate. This was painstakingly devised—that’s not something most would do for an object that doesn’t pose some sort of danger.” Dorian pauses before continuing, “If you want a less scientific answer…the whole thing just feels strange. It’s like it has an aura about it! It’s not, say, obviously sinister or even wholly unpleasant, though I can’t say that I like it.”

“Dorian’s right about the aura,” Harding says in a quiet voice. During her years of scouting adventures, the dwarven soldier has come face to face with most dangers the world has to offer and she is not easily perturbed—yet she seems perturbed.

“I feel like I’ve almost gotten used to it,” Kenric says, “but it’s just in the back of my mind, almost buzzing.”

“It’s not buzzing, not to me, but…there’s not really a better way to describe it.” The former scout, current lieutenant adds, “Everyone around it can feel it…even me, and dwarves really don’t feel magic things.”

The Inquisitor does not like the idea that the item is somehow special. “Maybe the magic was affecting the environment? Though strong enough energy can manifest itself, most magic has to interact by manipulating something in this world, or the Veil. When there’s a magical drop in temperature, it’s not really the magic that makes you shiver. It’s the cold air,” Lavellan suggests. She has no magic of her own but she has always sought to understand what she could of it. The arcane is a very real force and to regard it as an unknowable terror as most of the continent does is foolish. Her studies, however, have only shown her how incomprehensible many theories of magic are to her. As such, she defers to mages on most matters: “Dorian, could you discern anything about what you felt?”

“Not much. It wasn’t pure energy, and it had negligible effect on the Veil. It’s possible it might be affecting us instead of the environment.”

“That’s not something I like the sound of,” Cullen says. “There’s some possibility a demon might be bound in the item.”

“Be careful, Dorian,” Lavellan says, and the magister nods.

“I certainly intend to be.” Dorian looks towards the image of the orb in the center of the table, an air both of excitement and concern in his regard. Tevinters are not squeamish when it comes to odd magics, and Dorian has worked with highly dangerous arcana before. This seems to unsettle him.

Now that she is sufficiently disturbed by the thing that’s image floats before her, Lavellan wants to hear its story from the beginning: “Speaking of when you found the artifact. I heard it in brief when you contacted me with your sending crystal and I read the reports you flew back with the birds, but for obvious reasons,” namely the ever-looming threat of espionage, “the details in those have been somewhat sparse. I thought that when we set up this expedition with Tevinter, our plan was to dig up Chantry artifacts, not Elvish ones.”

The Inquisitor is aware that something must have gone awry for the archeologists and their military escorts to come away with their strange haul. Lavellan had arranged the expedition herself as just one part of a bigger diplomatic effort being orchestrated by Josephine—The Southern Chantry and the University of Orlais had long held a map to the ruin of a monastery tucked away in the Hundred Pillars. Though the monastery’s ruin is within Tevinter territory, the site had long been considered lost by the country, much to their historians’ well-documented consternation. The monastery has considerable historical significance to both the Southern and the Tevinter branches of the faith, and, more importantly, was rumored to play host to a long-lost treasure.

An invasion of the South by the Qun is inevitable in the coming years. The whole continent must be willing to stand together. The Tevinter origins of Corypheus and his Venatori extremists have not been forgotten in the South even eight years after the end of the Great War. Resentment boils beneath the smooth surface of diplomatic relations and the alliances the Imperium has reluctantly entered into with many of the Southern powers have been at best uneasy. To foster goodwill, the Inquisitor approached representatives of the Black Divine to propose a joint expedition to the lost monastery that would celebrate the shared origins of the continent’s faith.

Famous and widely-read intellectuals would be tapped to lead the expedition to generate public interest in the cooperative effort. Professor Evander Serranus of Qarinus, a polyglot mage whose well-received work spanned subjects ranging from the society of Arlathan to biographies of the Black Divines, was chosen to represent Tevinter. In kind, the famed scholar Brother Ferdinand Genitivi was unanimously selected by a Chantry Council to head the Southern contingency. That plan fell through when, a week before he was to leave for the Marches, Genetivi was injured. During an ongoing excavation in Fereldan of an Ancient Age Alamarri ritual ground, Genetivi himself fell through some poorly-constructed scaffolding into a rather large pit at the site. Bram Kenric had eagerly agreed to travel forth from the University of Orlais and serve as a last-minute replacement on the potentially dangerous mission as a disappointed Genetivi retreated to his Denerim home to nurse his broken leg.

Once the monastery was excavated and its contents were cataloged according to plan, the North and the South would broker an agreement over possession of any treasure unearthed, and an academic conference and great exhibition was planned to be held in Antiva City three years out to showcase the findings. The peaceful collaborative research was to be a sign of civility and an appreciation of common history. If the South’s diplomatic relationship with Tevinter can’t actually be good, Lavellan is determined to make it look good.

If the artifact causes some sort of schism in her mission, Lavellan will be furious. Yet she fears that it may pose greater problems. “I want to know exactly how you came upon it,” the Inquisitor orders.

Lieutenant Lace Harding’s wavering figure answers, the shoulders of her projection barely reaching above the table. “It’s a long one, Inquisitor, so I hope you have time. So the dig had been going for a couple months and had been pretty uneventful. Lots of treasure and stuff that Kenric calls ‘material history,’ but not really much else. I sort of expected that because it’s pretty remote—I mean, it took over a week to ride from there to this place, and we were going fast. Anyways, it hadn’t been too bad guarding the excavation of the monastery in the mountain valley. We had a bit of a problem with bandits, but it wasn’t very hard to manage, especially with the mage guards Tevinter sent. I didn’t think much of it. I’ve been put on a couple of dig sites by you guys before, and it’s pretty standard for people to try to rob them. They’re big targets with expensive goods and plenty of academics who have no idea how to handle a blade. Easy pickings, unless they’ve got people like us there. So it was all normal, until it stopped being normal.”

“As it does,” Lavellan sighs.

Harding gives an exasperated humming chuckle. “You’re telling me. We decided to start running patrols on some of the nearby mountain paths to watch for more attacks. One of our patrols didn’t return. We sent out more patrols to investigate, and we found the missing soldiers dead, but nothing about who killed them. But after that incident, a group of bandits we never saw before started hitting the site regularly. This was about four weeks ago or so? We would drive them off back up into the hills but couldn’t manage to kill any—they’d come in vicious but pull back hard, and they had barriers up that would block our blades and arrows while they retreated.”

“So there were mages among the bandits,” Cullen says. “Unsurprising. It’s far from unheard of for apostates to fall in with criminal elements.” Technically no mage is an apostate since the Circle’s abolition, but many still use the word to refer to hedge mages, especially ones who have found themselves on the wrong side of the law.

Once she is sure that the Commander is finished, the little lieutenant continues: “They kept coming. One evening when only a couple workers were out on the site finishing up for the night, they hit us hard and drove us way back. They nearly killed a couple of our pickets before we could get together a full retreat from the site—it was lucky the guys Tevinter sent knew some healing magic, because we didn’t really pack a lot of poultices and there were injuries. When we circled back to the site to check damage, we noticed that our so-called bandits didn’t take any of the artifacts that we had unearthed.”

Cullen nods, “Strange indeed. Chantry artifacts sell for good gold on the black market. For a bandit to leave those—”

“Right, that’s just it,” says Harding. “Bandits want to steal things. We began to think they were doing the fake bandit thing. You know, where they only pretend to be robbers because they’re trying to drive people away from somewhere without drawing attention to what they’re guarding. One day we got a bunch of our soldiers and the Tevinter guards to make a push to follow them back up into the mountains when they attacked us. We chased them for a pretty long while and had a couple of skirmishes. We started having some trouble tracking them when we got up to a pretty high altitude…but that’s when we found the ruin.

“We were cautious going in because it would have been a good set-up for an ambush, but after casing it out and setting our own positions outside, we decided to go in. It was cut in to the side of the mountain and you couldn’t see it until you were right on it, but there was this great big garden courtyard overgrown with plants I’d never seen before in my life. It was snowing outside, but it was warm in there to the point where I was sweating in my armor. I could tell the ruin was made by ancient elves immediately—I remember scouting in the forest around the Temple of Mythal before the battle there all those years ago, and there were all these mosaics in this one that looked just like the ones on the ruined outcroppings there.”

Lavellan asks, “Do you think the ruin was what they were trying to keep you away from?”

Harding stops to give a little hum. “It had to be. But once we were there, the bandits didn’t give us any trouble, which was…weird if they were trying to keep people out. Maybe they gave it up for lost. We had a pretty big force. From what I could tell from all their raids, there were at most thirty of them. They could do hit-and-runs, but storming us with that number would have been suicide.”

“Lady Harding sent back to the site for Professor Serranus, me, and a number of our assistants to be escorted to come look at the ruin,” Kenric adds in his thick Starkhaven accent.

Harding continues, “Before the professors got in, we secured the surface level. The upper area looked like people had been living in it, but no one was there. We recognized some of the armor lying around: it definitely looked like the bandits had been based out of there. At first I was thinking that maybe they were staying in the ruin because it was warm. Once Professors Kenric and Serranus got there we decided to go deeper inside.”

“I don’t do elves, really, but from how Serranus was reacting…I knew what we had there was exciting,” The Professor says jovially. “I think you would have liked to have been there—I remember you were so interested in history and my archeological methods in the Frostback Basin, and I assume a finding from the time of Elvhenan would have been especially exciting to you, what with you being a Dalish.” Lavellan intends to ignore the grammatical error but isn’t quite sure how to respond to the suggestion that she would be interested in the ruin because of of her race and culture. She supposes that it is actually in some part true. She has been steadfast in agnosticism as long as she can remember, but her upbringing had instilled in her somewhat of an interest in her People’s mythological past. Before she was old enough to wander off to barter for books and trinkets from the outside world or drink and swap stories with wilderness travelers, tales of Elvhenan were the only things to occupy her mind aside from the drudgery of base survival. Noticing the lack of a response from the Inquisitor, Kenric pauses and frowns. “That wasn’t right, was it?“

Lavellan suppresses a sigh and tries to hurry along the conversation. Since Kenric asked: “It’s just ‘Dalish,’ not ‘a Dalish.’ What else? Lieutenant, continue with your report.”

Harding goes on, “There was evidence of fighting in the upper parts of the temple. There was blood stains on a lot of it, and they didn’t look very old. I’m not sure who or what was fighting—there might have been sentinels, or revenants or something, but by the time we got there, anything that had been guarding the temple had been taken care of.”

“Lady Harding speaks the truth—it looked like it had been the site of a gory mess. We went down further into the ruin. There were magnificent carvings that Serranus said were scenes out of the mythology of the elves. We got to a big locked door, with a magic seal and a barrier.”

“It looked like someone had tried to blow it up,” Harding says, “but we couldn’t tell how long ago. There were char marks on some of the rocks, like someone had used incendiary spells or runes or maybe some sort of explosive but couldn’t get past the barrier. They’d excavated into the walls, too, but the barrier continued on through the stone—it’s not really a surprise that the ancient elves managed to seal a door better than apostates seal cave mouths when they want to hole up underground, heh.”

“Professor Serranus has excavated countless ruins from that time before,” Kenric begins an explanation. Lavellan’s lip twitches slightly in irritation. Despite the unavoidable interest her upbringing had instilled in her she has never felt any sort of personal attachment the triumphs of Elvhenan, but the thought of Tevinters continuously plundering what the once-proud civilization left behind is not one she relishes. From what she understands Professor Serranus is a thoughtful and kind man, but the tradition he works in is monstrous. His ancestors had wielded what elvish magics they could appropriate for themselves to topple the sparse remains of an Empire in turmoil and decline, and then had the nerve to claim this theft proved their racial superiority. Without noticing the small flash of discomfort from the Inquisitor, the Professor continues, “Serranus took a look at the door. He said there was a barrier with a sort of magical lock on it, and that it was still strong and dangerous even if had been decaying for some time. It seemed that much of it had been manually stripped away, but whoever was trying to open it had hit an impasse. He worked for near an hour applying his magic to its puzzles. The whole time, we waited for the bandits to come up on us.”

Harding goes on, “I had our troops stationed outside the temple and in the main hall to watch out for the bandits. We thought for sure they would come attack us and try to pin us down in the temple. They had to have been the ones who were stripping away the lock, and they were so persistent before…but they never attacked. We thought we heard something in through the back, and we checked up, but there was nothing. A couple of birds, maybe, but the bandits were nowhere to be seen. But even the whole time we were down there in the crypt—”

“It wasn’t a crypt! No bodies.”

“Oh, oops. Sorry Professor. You learn something new every day with this guy,” Harding chuckles, and the professor smiles. The happy expression remaining from the laugh drops off Harding’s face as she continues, “Anyways, Serranus got the lock to the not-crypt open. And when when he did that, that’s when I felt it—the aura. It was so strange, like my stomach was lifting and there were pinpricks on my skin. I could hear something, but when I tried to focus on the noise, it was gone. I wanted to go in deeper and I wanted to leave immediately. We all felt it and we just knew there was…something down there.”

“We travelled down into the ruin, for a long, long time. We reached the far bottom, which Serranus said was a sanctum for meditation. Serranus lit a sconce with that odd green mage fire, and the whole room just lit up! There was a large statue of two birds in obsidian. The birds were intertwined like they were fighting. They were set top of this big white marble ball and pedestal at the end of the sanctum. Some of Serranus’s assistants that came down with us said the statute was a strongly functioning ward. I asked if it was what was making us feel strange, and they were unanimous in the assertion that wards didn’t make anyone feel like this. We stepped onto the pedestal, and one of my assistants realized that one of the blocks at the foot of the bird statue wasn’t solid. We put up a barrier and removed the tile, and in it, we found the orb.” Kenric motions towards the floating ball. Lavellan stares at the image of the strange artifact and for a moment a somatic feeling of intertwined attraction and aversion swells within her.

“The mages called it a foci. Serranus told me that in Elvish artwork, gods and heroes of myth are near always depicted carrying them. Several of them had been found by Tevinter archeologists before, but they had all been inert. Serranus also mentioned that they were near always at the centerpiece of a temple, and well-guarded by bound spirits, enchantments and traps. But this one was hidden beneath a tile, no spells past the locks, and inside the sanctum, no sentinels, no revenants—I was horrified there might be revenants—no nothing. It was odd how…un-guarded it was.”

The Inquisitor gives a curious hum. “So Serranus told you no one has ever found a functioning foci.”

“Yes, this is an archeological first! He also says no one has ever found one in a container such as this. It seems to be quite the oddity. Other than the orb, the temple was bare apart from the beautiful murals on the walls. There were a number of wards in the bird sculpture and elsewhere, but near all of them were built into the structure of the temple. There wasn’t much of anything to remove from it, and frankly I was wary to take what we did. But we decided we shouldn’t leave the object for the fake bandits, even if we were risking a curse by taking it.”

Dorian laughs. “A curse! I bet Serranus got a laugh out of that. You all believe the most silly stories about magic.” He frowns at the image. “Though I suppose with that thing, I understand the concern.”

“And that’s when Harding first contacted us through her sending crystals. I remember this part,” she says. She had to make the call about where to take the artifact, and she had chosen the closest Inquisition facility—a walled estate acquired to make space for secret research. As uncomfortable as she is with letting those loyal to outside interests, especially Tevinter, into the facility she knows the hall is staffed, secure, and equipped with large magical and alchemical laboratories suited for the study of strange artifacts. “What else do you know about the temple? The statue you described is probably a depiction of Dirthamen’s ravens, Fear and Death.”

Kenric replies, “Yes, that’s right, from what I understand. Serranus said the inscriptions inside the temple payed honor to your god of secrets. He was able to notice a few more names of deities, and the name of the Great City, but little else. We had graphite and vellum scrolls on us, so we took some etchings to take them to people who might be able to read them. From what I understand no one speaks Elvish but the Dalish, and that’s mostly a creole with Common now, and the written language is all but dead and even academics who center their careers studying it have a good deal of difficulty. Colette—she’s tenure track now! I’m so proud—will be able to help, and the Tevinters have pledged their efforts but I think we may need more pairs of eyes…”

The academic trails off and gives a thoughtful hum before suddenly jumping. “I just recalled! Inquisitor, when we met for the first time in the Frostback Basin, one of your companions spoke Elvish fluently. We got to talking a number of times and I could swear he mentioned he could read the written language.” Oh no, thinks the Inquisitor. Not this. “Ah, why can’t I recall the fellow’s name?” Not him. She had been trying not to think of him all morning, not to let him in her mind. “Hmm. He was a mage, and, of course, an elf. A couple of times when we were in camp, he would come and ask some rather insightful questions about my body of work so it is rather rude of me to fail to remember his name.”

“I’m not sure who you’re referring to.” Lavellan raises her shoulders in a shrug and closes her eyes for a long moment. Closing her eyes would feel nice if not for the discomfort. She can feel her advisors, Harding, and especially Dorian staring right at her: they all know that she absolutely refuses to carry any sort of conversation about Solas. She had avoided the topic after he had left her, and actively sought to silence it once he reappeared as a monster from legend set on tearing apart the world.

Fen’Harel, she harbors no aversion to discussing. The Dread Wolf has been her adversary in a shadow war spanning six years and it is her job to speak of him. She can hate him and refuse to fear him. Talking about Solas as a person is different somehow. So many happy memories, all predicated on lies—reminiscing upon the barefoot vagabond with whom she had fallen so deeply in love makes her stomach turn with shame.

In a shambling attempt to obfuscate the identity of the elven mage, she explains, “The Inquisition keeps mages mixed in to a number of regular infantry and scouting regimens, you know, and there were a number of elves deployed on that particular mission. We maintain an archive of all our old personnel logs for record-keeping purposes, and I could try to find some names for you. Off the top of my head I have nothing though.” She frowns and tries her best to look like she is dredging through her memories of an adventure nearly a decade in the past to bring up the name of a soldier from the rank-and-file. “Sorry. If it helps, I do know plenty of other people who can translate written Elvish.”

Kenric seems puzzled. “Odd. He seemed to be working very closely with you, and he definitely was in our travel party when we explored the ruins. He had such good explanations of the Elvish motifs Inquisitor Ameridan left behind in his affects. I asked the fellow if he wanted to be cited in my paper, but he declined very politely. I would remember for certain what his name was if I had cited him.” Lavellan is prepared to continue to pretend to have no idea who the academic is referring to but he denies her this refuge when he wrests forth the evasive name: “Solas! That was it, yes. Would your friend Solas perhaps—“

“No, I don’t think Solas will be available,” Lavellan interrupts with haste.

The academic frowns. “Oh? Why—Oh, was there some sort of falling out?” Presumably given his revelation by watching as Lavellan’s face involuntarily contorts into a grimace, Kenric’s eyes widen and he immediately follows, “Ochone! The two of you weren’t— I mean, he didn’t do anything—“

“—No. To whatever you’re asking,” she cuts him off again. Since their excursion together in the Frostback Basin, she has seen Kenric only a handful of times at Orlesian museum galas and more recently during the planning stages of archeological expeditions such as this one. He requires absolutely no insight into her personal life. “I think that’s enough about that,” Lavellan finishes sharply. Perhaps too sharply—Kenric jumps and the outburst has evoked an uncomfortable hum from Josephine and a fake cough from Dorian. The affectations serve to cow the Inquisitor slightly. They’d expected better of her.

Lavellan likes to believe that she is relatively levelheaded, capable of taking stock of her emotions when confronted with difficult situations. Even a decade prior when she had been an prideful and stubborn young woman, she had doggedly attempted to employ an analytic mind and an even hand in her command of the Inquisition. Matters concerning her ex-boyfriend might prove different once the Inquisition turns to fighting Solas directly. She loathes how far he has driven her from rationality. Years have passed and Lavellan still seethes with rage, pain, and confusion.

The Inquisitor’s cheeks warm in embarrassment. She certainly has more practical excuses than guarding her broken heart for refusing to disclose how Solas is a malevolent pseudo-god and undying destroyer of worlds. That information is given strictly on a need-to-know basis, even within the ranks of the Inquisition and amongst its close allies. Among the human nobility, none suspect that the unknown puppeteer who meddles in international affairs is truly the character that inspired Dalish legend. They know he bides his time, though not for what, and they regard the shadowy figure with fear. Rather reasonably most assume he has merely adopted a name from mythology as a nom-du-guerre. Still those unfriendly to the Inquisitor are eager to suggest that Lavellan’s loyalty lies with Fen’Harel.

Gossips whisper scornfully about the jumped-up elf parading commandant through their halls with ambition unbecoming of one of her sort. She dresses in finery abjectly mismatched to her barbarian tattoos, and speaks with little deference to her betters. She cannot be trusted. The Inquisitor may parrot the Chantry’s liturgies, they say, but only to suit her political purposes. Against all things good and sacred, the Dalish wild-woman is devoted to her monster-god.

Perhaps these concerns are held honestly. Perhaps they are not. The enemies of the Inquisition in the continent’s nobility are devious and opportunistic. They already have cast suspicion on her Lavellan for her race and, despite her publicly avowed personal agnosticism, for the religious practices of her People. Her sexual liaisons need not draw their attention. Long ago during the war she kept her relationship with Solas rather private. Whispered giggles about her clear fondness for the quiet apostate, however, spread beyond Skyhold despite her best efforts. Quite naturally Solas, to his own great amusement, became in rumor the architect of a number of conspiratorial schemes.

The myriad theories ranged from the mundane (the deceitful mage seduced the naïve, stupid bumpkin in order to manipulate her into implementing his agenda—which in hindsight, Lavellan supposes, had not been far from the truth) to the absurd (the two of them were Elvish supremacists set on destroying the Chantry, crushing all the states of Thedas, and ruling the continent as king and queen) to the borderline pornographic (the middle-aged maleficar held the young Herald in bondage with blood magic as his sex-slave to indulge his sadistic carnal desires, and the top ranks of the Inquisition were trapped in an unending orgy fueled by human sacrifice). This gossip persistently made rounds each time she set foot in the courts. A seemingly benign and moderately eccentric hedge mage had inspired slanderers to conjure such fantasies based on little more than his proximity to her. None of Lavellan’s political enemies in South Thedas or Tevinter appear to have made the connection between the man who had shared the her bed and the so-called god who manipulates the continent’s goings on from the shadows.

Lavellan hopes the wretched ingrates never find the truth. The Qun knows. Lavellan has a number of planned responses to salvage her reputation if Qunari agents deploy the information to politically undermine her and cripple her designs against them. She does not know how she will handle the humiliation on a personal level.

A stilted silence has fallen over the meeting after Lavellan’s caustic interruptions to Kenric. Dorian nervously feigns another two coughs in rapid succession and the flustered Inquisitor takes the cue. It will arouse less suspicion to confirm that she and Solas had fallen out romantically: “Sorry, sorry. It’s a very personal matter—That’s really quite unprofessional of me to let it come up,” she mutters with forced regret in her voice. Kenric opens his mouth to apologize but she waves him down as she goes on, “If you need help with the translation, Dalish Keepers study to read written Elvish. I know a few people who can take a look, though they would likely be unwilling to travel that close to the Tevinter border. Even far south many of the clans have poor experiences with slavers.”

“Then maybe your Dalish colleagues could come to the University? I plan to head back to Orlais as soon as the envoys from the dig site get our supplies and our share of Chantry relics. They will likely be here within the hour.”

“Good. Drum up interest in those items, make a production about previewing what you found at the site. Everyone needs to think the mission was entirely routine. We know that the Qun has spies in the University, and we should avoid drawing attention to the translations.” She worries more about the People—Lavellan wonders how many elven janitors, cooks, couriers, and even students spy for Solas. She hates that she must harbor suspicion towards those who share her blood. “I’ll try and find Keepers or Firsts in Orlais and western Fereldan who can make the journey. Or surely I can find someone in Wycome, either from my clan or one of the others that have settled there.”

Harding pipes in, “Before we break the connection, I have to tell you—we’ve still got people posted at the dig site. We might wanna get reinforcements, what with all the researchers still there. I’m afraid the fake bandits will think the big group has their artifact, or that real bandits will come again for the Chantry relics. I’m the only one on the mission with a sending crystal, so we haven’t been in communication...I’m headed back when Professor Kenric leaves. If I can, Commander Cullen—“

“—I’ll see your request for reinforcements granted. We can discuss the details later,” the Commander says. “Anything else?”

“We also tried to move as much of Project Jackdaw as we could into hiding before the Tevinters got in like the Inquisitor told us to when she told us to come to the laboratory. We couldn’t get all of the vats of wyvern poison up and away but one of the alchemists on staff told me she set the room to make it look like we were making medicines.”

“Good work, Harding,” Lavellan says. “It should turn out all right, but Josephine, could you prepare damage control for the worst-case scenario?”

“I have some ideas for containment and a counter-narrative in mind,” the Antivan woman says with a nod.

“The Qun is watching us. The worst elements in the Magisterium are watching us.” Lavellan has found that she is a preternaturally lucky woman but does not believe that she is fortunate enough to have the timing of her wolf dreams be coincidence. The Inquisitor is not at all flattered to have her old lover’s attention: “Fen’Harel is watching us. You remember the power that the last orb like this held, and everyone we stand against certainly will too. We must maintain absolute secrecy.”

* * *

 

  
The Inquisitor has a cup of tea as she chats with her advisors after the images from the crystal blink away. It is inconvenient that Inquisition intelligence and Chantry intelligence have essentially been consolidated and all of it must be run through the Grand Cathedral in Val Royeaux, she laments. It is sad that the Inquisition has to appear as if it is operating solely as an arm of the Chantry. They exasperatedly discuss some new trouble between Fereldan and Orlais that the powers have asked the Chantry and the Inquisition, which once again has grown into more of a private army than an honor guard, to arbitrate. Josephine worries that the Tevinter professor will discover the existence and purpose of Project Jackdaw, the laboratory’s major undertaking, if he stays at the facility for much longer. Cullen shares her concern but has ideas about how to perhaps move it. When the meeting recuses itself, Cullen goes back to make plans with Harding. Josephine asks Lavellan if she intends to have anything for breakfast and offers her a lemon scone from a basket on her desk. She lies and says that she ate bread and jam on her way into the meeting. As she often does, the Inquisitor feels sick to her stomach and does not want to eat.

Lavellan forces herself to take a small walk around the courtyard. Later in the day she intends to train in the yard: though she is no longer a passable warrior exercise keeps her muscles from atrophy and makes her hungry enough to eat. The Inquisitor must remain in as good of health as she can, even when she has little energy to care for herself. She will not let the sickness win. The whole of her body has started to hurt again. That morning Lavellan had risen from her bed very early and begrudgingly dressed herself in military regalia to give a eulogy at a memorial service that some horrible person decided should be at the break of dawn and she is especially tired. Though she hardly sleeps, rousing herself from bed has become a miserable task.

It is the Anchor’s doing, even though the mark is long gone.

A phantom pain from her missing left hand sends jolting shockwaves through her whole body as she heads down the stairs of the castle’s main hall into the autumnal stretch of the castle’s inner yard. This happens periodically. The mages and alchemists who treat her do not have a solution to the lasting damage the Anchor inflicted and still inflicts on her body. The formulas for the spells that had provided her most recent reprieve from pain had come mailed in a letter from a “concerned researcher of the arcane” five years ago.

She recognized the handwriting on the letter and thinking about that still makes her angry and miserable. She is not a person who cries but reflecting on the guilt Solas seems to harbor causes a great discomfort and a great rage to well up within her, bidding tears to her eyes. How dare he ease her suffering? How dare he keep her alive? He plans to see her dead one day anyways.

Her anger at Solas does not prevent Lavellan from using what he has given to her. The dubiously sourced magic formula had been extensively researched and reverse-engineered for safety and when it was finally applied Lavellan at first thought she had been cured. But she had not been, and after half a decade its efficacy has waned. She does not think she will get any new help from her nemesis. The mages and alchemists in the Inquisition’s employ foist new treatments on her like archers emptying their quivers blindly with shots into the dark, forlornly hoping for a single arrow to take purchase in the unknown. She finds it likely that her caretakers will accidentally poison her one day. It would be a profoundly stupid accident.

The thought of dying in an accident has followed her about just behind the monster wolf all morning. The memorial service she had given in the early morning was held for a beloved drill sergeant who had retired from his post in the Inquisition earlier in the year. The old knight was thrown when his horse shied outside his family’s estate in Highever and he died when he hit his head in the fall. The man had fought alongside Loghain Mac Tir against Orlais, taken up arms and roused a makeshift regiment to join the Hero of Fereldan defending the people of Denerim against darkspawn, and had been among the first to join the Inquisition with his offer to train calvary units and lead them into battle.

The knight had galloped into fire and fury, outrunning death atop his charger. A ride on a crisp autumn day and an inconveniently placed rock had killed him. She hates how mundane that is, how grim and boring recovering the corpse must have been.

To honor the knight’s faith during her speech at the memorial service she had regurgitated some Canticle popular among the soldiers: “Blessed are those who hold faith that they walk in Our Maker’s sight. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear the summer heat; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a years of drought and its boughs stretch forth laden with fruit.” The Inquisitor does not believe in gods and feels insincere offering religious benedictions, even in her capacity as a representative of the Chantry. She truly does spit out scripture only when it suits her aims. Part of Lavellan understands and envies the comfort and courage the faithful draw from their belief. The other part of her disdains the idea of rendering one’s whole self into the hands of an unknowable Maker.

She is determined to fight her own death but she will not shrink away from it. Growing up as a wandering tribeswoman she spent her days miserable with her lot, enumerating the accidents that she could take petty thrill in avoiding—losing her footing on a ledge and plummeting to the rocks below, drowning in her armor, expiring at the end of a mercenary’s blade. Few hunters, and even fewer of those in the war party, manage to grow old, she knew, but she did not care—she chased down death for the sake of defying it, convinced she could outrun and outfight whatever came to take her. Since the Conclave much more spectacular dangers have come to threaten her life. Never for a moment did she believe fate would shield her, but never for a moment did she truly believe she would die.

Now years as a noncombatant living in pain have lead her to fear that one day she may simply lie down and not be able to rise again. Lavellan hates the idea and does not plan on staying down. She thinks of her own mother settling in to a bed of wildflowers, knowing well she was going to her rest.

If the Maker has turned his sights from the world and the Creators are locked away, she need not resign herself to their plans for accidents or comply with any date of expiration they’ve placed on her body. Not even the Creator that still walks the earth will spell her end. The Dread Wolf has a thousand eyes set to watch her every move, but she will certainly not be resigning herself to his plans. Lavellan will not die until she is ready to.

The Inquisitor saunters around the courtyard and pays pleasantries to those she sees. A bright mottle of red and yellow has taken over the leaves of the trees and the climbing ivy and the autumn air is fresh and brisk. Dagna the Arcanist is out from the undercroft to help inspect a shipment of rune components with the quartermaster and she waves happily at her boss. Lavellan listens in on a meeting between creature researchers Minaeve and Helisma and the retired Dennet’s replacement where they are trying to determine how to best domesticate and saddle the common wyvern. It’s a busy day in the small marketplace flourishing in the courtyard, and many shopkeepers come to her bundled in their fine jackets to show her their goods. There’s a stall from a bakery at the village that has sprung up outside the castle gates down the mountain, and Lavellan manages to get down the sample of a pear tart offered to her.

Despite the activity the castle seems empty to Lavellan. She misses the friends she made on her old adventures—Cassandra and Varric and their constant bickering, Sera’s silly pranks. Rainier intently carving horses and griffins out of wood scraps in the stables, and Vivienne watching over the Grand Hall from her perch on the mezzanine. She thinks of Cole hiding away like a ghost, sneaking bright apples from the kitchen and placing them on the desks of overworked clerks, and of the Iron Bull sitting in the tavern with one big hand on flustered Dorian’s shoulder and the other raising his drink aloft in a toast. Lavellan still sees them all from time to time but rarely in Skyhold and never together.

After her walk she returns to the castle and begins the ascent up the stairs to her quarters. It is an almost punishing climb some days. The Inquisitor’s life seems much less epically heroic than it had once been. She mostly plays politics and pushes papers, and today will be no exception to her settled routine. There are a number of procurement plans the Commander and the Quartermaster have put together for her to review. Papers wait for her above, piled high on her desk. Surveys for development. Spy dossiers put together by Charter. A number of supposedly personal letters she must respond to for the sake of politics. Pleas for her support in petty fights over secession. Tending to optics—she must offset whispers that she has slowly undone the work of the Exalted Council’s limitations of her power especially because they are by and large true. She needs the advantages and the reach.

A good number of the continent’s political elite despise her and fear her. “That cunning elf,” they’ll call her, cursing her like she’s raided their cupboards for their dining sets and made off with the good silver. Though she has no problem lying through her teeth, especially to people she loathes, she keeps her dealings excruciatingly fair. It is a tactical decision and not a moral stance: she will not give anyone the satisfaction of exposing her as a cheat before all of Thedas. Among the commoners elves can be folk heroes if they feature in good tavern songs. She is still remembered as a savior and held in high regard by the smallfolk. Their fidelity is a protection she will not cede easily, and she will does her best to leave no evidence that might cause them to believe that she is uncouth and grasping in her dealings.

Lavellan’s shoulders tense and sore under the straps of her prosthetic arm and it weighs heavy, but she will not remove it even if she spends the next few hours alone in her chambers. Allowing herself to undress would begin the slow and steady slide to sleeping during the day, she is sure. She has to be stressed for it to irk her so early in the day. She rubs the juncture between her prosthetic arm and her real one just below her elbow. Under her regalia, jointed metal runners help stabilize and offset the weight of the fake hand, and leather straps run up the remainder of her limb to a pad capping her shoulder that is secured to the rest of her body by leather straps that wrap around her torso. Dwarven craftsmen in Orzammar had designed and built her arm on special order for her and the thing has some utility. The fingers and wrists are jointed and opposable if she adjusts them with her good hand, and the grip is strong enough to hold things like papers or wine glasses.

Though anger does her no good Lavellan still grows angry with Solas whenever she thinks of her prosthetic. It is his fault that her appendage is now made of inert and lifeless metal. She supposes it is also his fault that she lives in a castle and is now only slightly less powerful than the Empress of Orlais or the Archon of Tevinter.

Stairs can be slow and lend time to thought for Lavellan. Some days her memories of Solas feel so distant that he seems entirely abstract, like he is no longer a man made of flesh and blood, and had never been at all. Other days his presence inundates Lavellan’s dreams and her recollections of him grow stronger and her trickle of remaining love for him swells forth in great currents and bursts forth within her heart like a river overrunning its banks. It’s sickening and painful. She has never hated herself before but she is filled with a deep self-loathing each time she feels the pang of lingering affection for her silly old man rising in her chest.

Sometimes the tinge of amour coloring her memories of him with familiar hues ebbs away and Lavellan thinks of him as he truly is: incomprehensible and monumental in all his horrid ways. When she puts her mind to it, Lavellan cannot fathom Solas or his works. In her recollections he seems a man like any other, but even if he is truly a mortal elf as he claims he must be a different order of being. There is no such thing as a god, but Lavellan is sickened that Solas bears close resemblance to one. While he has lived, civilizations have risen from the dust and fallen back into the same. Seas have claimed mountains, multitudinous trees have risen from seeds to stretch into forests great and vast, and fertile marshy planes have parched into unforgiving deserts. Solas has destroyed an entire world, and in erecting the Veil he warped the architecture of the universe and the nature of reality itself. He soon intends to do so again—though he may want for power now, the very mechanics of the universe have served as his playthings.

And she has served as his plaything. The Inquisitor has convinced herself that Solas was incapable of loving her in the same capacity she loved him. She does not doubt that he had been in some way fond of her, perhaps only as an erstwhile source of physical pleasure. He is, after all, corporeal. Even if Solas had thought she was “real,” whatever that meant, Lavellan is still despicably small compared to him. Could one love a creature whose life might span a mere blink? That lacked entirely one’s higher faculties?

Men and women are often fond of pets and infants but they cannot delight in knowing them innately or admire them as an equal. Lavellan’s arrogance and narcissism roil when she thinks of how at best Solas must have regarded her as some darling simple thing.

At least her arrogance and narcissism prevent her from giving in to despair. She reminds herself he cannot be that powerful and all-knowing, as he seems to have made no discernible process tearing down the Veil over the course of a decade. Some part of her thinks she can stop him. A foolish and childish part of her thinks that she can save him, even while maintaining that she may as well be an insect before him. Even if she is an insect, she will not stand to humble herself.

Solas is a scheming madman who has made it clear that he intends for the world to burn. The creep skulks in the form of a wolf around the periphery of her dreams, pressing paw prints in the phantom snow and sounding forlorn howls in the hoary distance. She used to howl back that he should go fuck himself. He never answered and she has long since given up screaming her hatred at him. Lavellan wonders why he visits her. It certainly isn’t from forlorn amour. Maybe he is trying to drive her mad. Maybe he is surveilling her. The lupine silhouette lopes with its head held low and its glowing eyes cast down, even as they are fixed upon her. He seems so miserable, and Lavellan hates it. When they last spoke Solas claimed to harbor some contrition about his horrid ends, but that means little to Lavellan. She has hunted with elves who lamented killing rabbits even as they neared full traps to snap the animals’ necks.

While he commends his mind to haunting her dreams, Solas must lay his head somewhere. The Inquisition has found and stormed bases of his spy rings’ operations but has never turned up any trace of Solas himself other than his handwriting on documents or in magical formulas scrawled in chalk across walls. She wonders where he calls home. She wonders where he is. Lavellan does not expect to have that question answered any time soon, let alone when she reaches the top of the stairs leading up into her bedchamber.

Solas steps out from behind her desk and he stands before the Inquisitor with his hands folded behind his back. His posture is both gentle and menacing as he regards her in the flesh for the first time in six years. “Inquisitor. I’m glad to see you well,” Solas greets in his kindly way and Lavellan feels her blood drain from her face as the rest of her body goes straight and rigid. The mid-morning autumn sun pours through the big windows that reach from the floor to the ceiling of the bedchamber and Lavellan looks upon her old lover and as quiet settles between them, she decides she must have gone mad. The light casts its illumination across Solas’s bald head and it catches in his reddish eyelashes and fills the soft lines of aging on his face, giving the man an almost ethereal glow.

Solas’s gaze lingers as it catches Lavellan’s own. His grey eyes seem almost a pale lilac in the bright light and fixed before them Lavellan buzzes with an almost cervine energy and awareness. She has come face to face with her wolf and at once she is terrified and exhilarated. Despite her visceral reaction to his presence she is a warrior and she does not waver. Solas gives a small hum that seems both terribly happy and unbearably sad. Politely, Solas offers his apology: “Please pardon my intrusion. For the sake of time, I thought it might be best to speak with you in person.”


	2. The Visitor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas brings grave warnings to Lavellan, but she has little reason to trust him.

The Inquisitor starts four or five sentences in her head but none of them quite manage to come to fruition. She is as angry as she is anxious as she is astounded by his presence. Eventually she spits out, “Solas. Andaran-atishan, I suppose. Uhm.” Absolute bewilderment bubbling in her voice, Lavellan almost sputters: “How long have you been in my bedroom?”

“Only for a short time, I assure you, lethallan,” Solas answers as he stands barefoot upon the silken rug spanning the floor of the room. He is not in rags or golden armor but instead has donned a fur-lined coat of deep purple. The odd garment has drooping dolman sleeves and florals embroidered in dark orange and red thread that is bound tightly shut upon his chest and falls to the middle of his calves. It is a somewhat ridiculous thing and Lavellan has some sense it was in no better taste seven thousand years ago than now. Solas’s politeness muddles with a strange excitement as he repeats himself, “Again, I apologize for coming here unannounced.”

She regards him carefully, trying to regain composure. Solas is a monster out of legend, but she has stared down those before. This is different. “Oh, no, no. It’s fine. I just wish I would have known you were stopping in so I could have cleaned up a little,” Lavellan laments with a sardonic lilt and seething laugh. From across the room the items on her desk seem in order but it is impossible to tell for certain whether or not they have been rifled through or tampered with. Colder and calmer as she collects her bearings, the Inquisitor continues: “It’s been a couple years. So why are you here now?”

“To the point as always.” Like the flickering lick of a match’s flame, the corners of Solas’s mouth twitch upwards momentarily. She notices the softness of his lips amidst his sharp features and countenance and a strange fury simmers stronger inside her. His little smile’s brief appearance makes him look all the more glum as he continues, “From the reports I have received, I believe that one of the Inquisition’s archeological ventures unearthed an item I have sought across the ages.”

“You’ll have to be more specific. We’re sponsoring about ten excavations right now, I think,” Lavellan says. Solas looks at her impassively, as if he knows that she knows precisely what he is talking about. She gives a fake smile in response to that. “Right now we have a very nice pit going in Fereldan.”

“And as always, away from the point you do not wish to address.” Solas appears to suppress a roll of his eyes and answers her evasive flippancy with calm, his tone gentle but his words dire: “Inquisition communications passed my way describe an orb embossed with unrecognizable script, held suspended in a glass case. Based on these sparse accounts I recognize the artifact procured. The orb is very dangerous. I do not know where you found it or where you hold it now, so I come to you in haste. You must give it to me so I can destroy it.”

Lavellan is quiet, lost for a moment. Solas is demanding something of her. Memories of the faces of men who had died in mere fear of him, of the charred remains of warriors, and of the single blink with which he killed the Viddasala flash into her mind. It had been his magic that held back the sky and his magic that had torn it open anew. Despite his soft-spoken manner and the silliness of his fur-lined robe Solas is deadly, and impossibly so. She had just been reflecting on his unknowable nature and unfathomable power, but now that he stands before her it all seems as absurd as it is imminent. Solas will have Lavellan dead if he wants her dead. Her heart nearly skips a beat as the familiar joyous rush of laughing in the face of overwhelming power begins to rise up within her. The pleasure of spiting her ex-boyfriend muddles sweetly with a long dormant death-drive stirring from its slumber. She tries her hardest not to smile at him when she asks, “You don’t think I’m actually going to do that, do you?”

Solas narrows his eyes and frowns at her but continues with firm and measured language, as if he had anticipated such a response: “I concede that it would be very foolish of you to trust me. Asking this is difficult—what right have I to any sort of favor from you?” She raises her brows but otherwise remains staid as Solas continues, “I would not deign to impose upon you if the artifact did not pose a cataclysmic threat to the world.”

Lavellan gives a spiteful yawn. “That sounds like it might put you out of a job.” Solas sounds serious, but then again he almost always sounds serious. His intractable pessimism is like a palmister’s prediction or a bad cough: things are never quite as ominous as he’s forecasted until they are infinitely worse. Irrespective of any threat posed, his alarmism is somewhat funny to her. His frown deepens and it loses some of its placidity. If she’s playing with fire in defying him she at least wants to see the flames dance. The tension in him is fantastically palpable as she ambles across the room slowly and indolently to peer out the window over the mountainside. In the sun’s sharp white leer Solas watches Lavellan like a starved animal, his cool impassivity beginning to erode. He is desperate and dangerous and together those things excite her.

She cannot help but regard Solas as the man she once knew as she speaks to him face to face. Lavellan knows well that Solas likes to think of himself as wizened and metered in his ways, as having settled himself into a hard-earned serenity. This quietude rests as a thin veneer over a blisteringly hot impatience, the Inquisitor has learned. Solas can hardly delay or deny himself gratification when anything he truly wants is before him for the taking. Both physically and emotionally, their intimacy had revolved around her ability to coax his hunger to the surface and to engage with it, stoking it and satiating it to their mutual delight.

Now she does something sinister for her pleasure and his discomfort: he is a horrendously dangerous man but there’s sport to be had in baiting him like there’s sport to be had in baiting dragons. Solas chokes back huffing vitriol as he shakes his head like one might at the antics of an impudent child or ill-behaved lapdog. Which is she to him, Lavellan wonders? Her musing is both bitter and blithe as Solas continues: “You jest, Inquisitor, but the orb threatens my ends the same as it threatens yours. Each of our interests, while otherwise opposed, would best be served by its prompt destruction. I thought I might mitigate the risk of disaster by seeking your cooperation. But if you do not willingly cede the artifact, I will wrest it from your Inquisition using any means at my disposal.”

There it is—the threat. His warning is not specific nor is it violent, but Solas has made it clear he will not tolerate the Inquisition as an obstacle. If he is threatening he likely does believe that this item is dangerous to him, Lavellan thinks. Something of less import might warrant slower and calmer manipulation, but his words are harsh and urgent.

After a long pause during which the barely concealed impatience of Solas’s gaze rests upon her, the Inquisitor decides what next to say. “Before I make any big decisions, I want more information about the orb. Tell me what it is and where it came from,” Lavellan demands. With some morbid amusement she watches relief manifest in Solas’s visage, his jaw relaxing and his brow raising slightly as a small amount of tension drains from him. “And tell me how it’s dangerous. I’m inevitably going to be taken hostage or murdered over this thing. I think I should at least know a bit about it.” Lavellan expects Solas to lie, but if Varric has taught her anything it is that lies can make for good entertainment.

The mage seems oddly grateful for the request: “I knew that you would at least want to know.” After taking a moment to gather his thoughts Solas almost hurriedly begins, “We called the orb ‘the Conflux.’ And as to where it came from,” and with a smile that is not at all happy spreading over his face, Solas gives a dour humming laugh that makes Lavellan’s already-twisting stomach wring itself into a knot and finishes, “there were some who came to believe it fell down through the gaps between the stars. But we never really did find out.”

“We?”

“The false gods of Elvhenan, of course! When the Conflux emerged, all across the empire a great peace reigned. Prosperity brought forth great advancements in magics, science, and art. Vibrant Arlathan had newly ascended as a pinnacle of culture, unimaginable in its beauty and inimitable in its splendor. I will not say this world was perfect. Slaves and the wretched on the margins of society suffered as they have always done—and in this time, for that there was truly no excuse. Yet most common men were afforded a great deal of dignity and opportunity, and across Elvhenan there was a sense of hope and harmony.

“This harmony was fraught. The Evanuris, used to the grandeur and drama of war, thirsted for power for power’s sake. They saw the people they ruled as pawns in a grand game of chess and ordered their vassals about, prodding at their godly rivals in attempt to create strife and foment war. Only Mythal, called Mother Goddess and Highest Justice, fought to preserve the peace. In this time I was considered a minor deity just below the Evanuris. I served as Mythal’s Legate—a role not so different than the Left Hand of the Divine—and handled for her matters of intrigue and unsightly affairs. As such I worked incessantly to stave off the threat of war through public and political posturing that posed the other Evanuris against each other in such a way that none dared to take action and cause war.

“Even while set in uneasy stalemate, each of the Evanuris prepared for war. Andruil in particular grew determined to muster a massive force to rival the great armies of Elgar’nan and Falon’Din. To equip her legions with weapons and armor, she needed more resources than her lands could provide. One day she broke treaty and stormed deep underground to seize a large mining operation from the Children of the Stone. She took the dwarves there as slaves and forced them to mine until the rock ran dry of ore. Unsatisfied, Andruil commanded that her slaves bear deeper into the rock despite their panicked protests. They feared something.”

“The ancient dwarves dug so deep they found Titans in the bowels of the earth,” Lavellan interrupts. “I have a hard time believing they fear depth.”

Solas gives a nod. “The aversion was apparently site-specific—the enslaved dwarves believed the mine she had seized was cursed ground. A representative was named by the dwarves to speak to Andruil and her Legates. He was the most eloquent and courageous of the company and he told the goddess plainly that she should not continue with her folly. The mine had been a veritable death trap for its workers: An unusual number of freak accidents claimed an unusual amount of lives, and there were abnormally high rates of suicide and violence in the miners’ barracks. Several men had been removed from the project due to the sudden onset of insanity and before the elvhen invasion so many dwarves had left the project for safer rock that the mine likely would have been abandoned altogether soon. The Stone, the dwarven representative claimed, wished to hold its secrets in the dark. Neither dwarves nor elves, he said, should defy that wish.”

“Let me guess,” says Lavellan, “Andruil didn’t listen to him.”

“Indeed. Andruil had the representative brought to the surface in chains. The sky held much, much greater mystique to dwarves then than it does to their descendants beneath the earth today, and the dwarf was overwhelmed with terror. He struck mad by the great blue maw that hung open above his head and by the horrendous burning radiance of the Sun. There on the surface as his mind was flayed his body was tortured by Andruil’s gaolers. He was brought back before the other Children of the Stone shattered and shrieking to be hanged and gibbetted. Any dwarf, Andruil said, who refused to comply with orders would share the sad fate of the man who had once been their best and bravest. Many agreed to go to their deaths in such a manner and many took their own lives, but the slave company drove deeper still. And that is where the Conflux first appeared.

“The orb was embedded in the rock amid veins of lyrium and silverite, but it seemed to be foreign to the place. It was made of a material seen nowhere in the mine, and in fact nowhere in the known world. The words upon it were unreadable. The item was removed by the Legate in charge of the operation from the rock and placed aside as a curiosity—there was still ore to mine. Then trouble started.” Very plainly Solas explains, “The orb had seemingly been awakened from dormancy. Within days it killed half the mining camp and drove the rest mad.”

Lavellan blinks. “…excuse me? The orb killed them. By itself?”

“Yes. Shortly thereafter, Andruil herself took charge of the item. For a time, she sought to keep it as a secret but she could not control its power. Soon in a panic she called upon the other Evanuris for help destroying it. It was then I first laid my own eyes upon the Conflux—Mythal sent me to examine the orb. I was immediately fascinated. At my request she suspended my other duties so that I was able to devote all my time to research.”

Lavellan holds up her prosthetic arm to signal Solas to stop. “No. Wait. Go back. How did the orb kill people? I have Inquisition men and allies with it right now, and if—”

“Wait!” Solas jumps interrupting the Inquisitor as if he has remembered something very important. He steps towards her and she almost falls back in surprise. Hurriedly with his hand out in front of him, he insists, “Quickly, Inquisitor, tell me—do you know if your people have removed the object from the glass casing?”

Lavellan catches herself by stepping in towards him and rushes to answer, “No, no! Not as far as I know.” She looks him in his wide eyes and waves her arms in front of her almost reflexively to soothe his urgency. “From what I understand they don’t intend to for some time.”

The mage sighs, and he shuts his eyes before burying his face in his palms. “Hearing that is an immense relief. The caisson is of my design: it creates a vibration much like the Veil to isolate The Conflux from what energy it might absorb, save that of the vibration itself, and then it extracts what power is generated from the orb to maintain the barrier. The system is entirely self-sustaining so long as it remains undisturbed.”

As Solas calms through his explanation, Lavellan almost grows angry at him for jumping at her. It hadn’t even been frightening in the moment—only in hindsight. The fact he is so unnerved deeply bothers her. The undying man, destroyer of worlds, is tense and afraid. “So my men are protected by the case. Good. But what does this Conflux _do_?”

Solas rights himself from his roused panic. He now stands only a foot or two from Lavellan but she is too distracted by her curiosity to note the new proximity. Softly he explains, “Similar to my Anchor, the Conflux serves as a focus for gathering and channeling energy toward a specific task. It draws a massive amount of power from the physical world and the Fade and uses it to open a gateway to the Void.”

Lavellan is confused. “The Void? Isn’t that nothingness?”

An odd edge begins to well in Solas’s soft voice and Lavellan recognizes it as excitement. It is closer to the sort of excitement born of fear or hunger than the sort born of joy and anticipation. “As we understand it, yes! It’s nothingness and chaos. However, this understanding is limited. Perhaps—perhaps inherently. I mentioned that without the casing, the object will drive those in its vicinity mad. We are unsure why, but our best guess is that its operation is inherently so unworldly its presence serves to warp, disrupt, and pervert both the physical body and the immaterial mind. But it is much more dangerous when the gate in the Conflux is opened.  
The Void touches this world and the contact between the two incommensurate spaces makes itself manifest in disorder and destruction. The devastation caused by it overshadows entirely what happens when the Fade is abruptly forced in contact with the physical world. With a mere fraction of the energy, the Conflux could create a disaster that would make the Breach look inconsequential.”

The Inquisitor does not know whether Solas is telling the truth but she is enraptured by his story. “Why would someone create something that did that? Is it a weapon? Was someone trying to enter the Void?”

“We do not know who made it, and its intended purpose is unknown. As for what I have considered in theory… the possibilities presented by the Conflux are truly astounding. But in practice the Conflux is horrendously unstable. You should recall better than any other what happened when the Anchor became volatile—once awakened from its dormancy the Conflux would likewise emanate bursts of destruction that grew in magnitude over time.”

“How long do you think it had been there?”

“From our experiments, we discerned that it was far older than the rock from which it was brought forth.”

Lavellan is silent. Solas looks over her in appraisal and she almost glares back at him in kind. If he is telling the truth, she does not want to give him the orb. Solas is likely powerful enough as is, and she will not allow such a thing to fall into the hands of her nemesis. He seems to guess at her line of thought: “It is likely that through continued espionage I will be able to discern the location of the Conflux in the next few weeks, but I would rather have this dealt with instantly for the danger it poses.”

Lavellan pretends not to register the insult against her security apparatus or what he is insinuating. She has more questions and Solas is the only person who might have answers. “I want to know why something so dangerous was so poorly guarded. From what was communicated to me, there was only a barrier, a door, and some wards between this and the whole world. The Well of Sorrows had an army of sentinels watching over it, and I’m certain you recall fighting demons and revenants over petty weaponry—people don’t leave important things unguarded. Yet the party who found the Conflux told me it had been, for all intents and purposes, left laying around in a temple’s basement.”

“That is odd. Hm.” Solas pauses to think, raising his hand to cover his lips as his eyes cast upwards. The moment is calm and less tense than previous ones and Lavellan finds her gaze lingering on the corners of his lips and on his high cheekbones and it is the worst possible time to think about how Solas is pretty. He continues, “Even after the destruction it caused we managed to hush word of its existence amongst the wider populace of Elvhenan. Perhaps whoever hid it did not think that it was in danger of being sought out and discovered.” He doesn’t seem particularly satisfied with that idea and muses for a couple moments longer, wavering where he stands so close to her. “You said you found it in a temple. So that means they entrusted their priests with the treasure. To whom was the temple dedicated? Which of the Evanuris?”

“From the description I got of the site, I would assume Dirthamen.”

A sour look crosses Solas’s face but it dissolves with a small sigh from him. “Unsurprising.” He thinks for a moment, and then says, “As the Evanuris and their associates studied the Conflux, conflict arose between the researchers. At first we had all agreed to see it destroyed, and we found a method by which we could safely do that. Once we were certain, however, we had stabilized the Conflux many of our number thought that we should not waste the item’s potential by destroying it.” Lavellan notes that this segment of Solas’s story has less detail, and he did not announce his own position on the matter. “Experimentation upon it by some parties became too bold, and with dire consequences. There were many more deaths. Tensions rose and those who wished to destroy the Conflux sought to forcibly seize it, and both that number and those who wished to protect the item began to prepare for war. I thought at long last, the peace I had fought for had ended, until one day the Conflux simply vanished. From what we could tell of the scene and the impact on the surrounding Fade, the Conflux destroyed itself, like it had collapsed in to its middle. The explanation we settled on was that the cycle the caisson set it in had decayed its own function and the Conflux had torn apart its own body and mechanisms or crumpled in upon itself into the Void.”

“And you just left it at that?” Lavellan insists with her brows raised. She crosses her arms and looks him in the eyes with a frown on her face. She can tell that Solas is not giving her the whole story.

Solas shakes his head, some irritation welling in his voice. “Of course not,” he asserts with a calm pressure. “All involved knew that one of our alleged Emperor-Gods or their cohort had stolen it! Yet we all feared what might happen if the holder was cornered. The Evanuris spied on each other for millennia trying to uncover its whereabouts. Some even grew suspicious of their own Legates and Cardinals, and even a number of High Solicitors. Many of us were regarded as secondary deities at the time—the Evanuris thought one or a number of us might intend to use the might of the Conflux to usurp their exalted thrones. Grand Scholars were ousted and loyal Commanders were put to the sword by their own lieges on nothing more than rumor and baseless suspicion. By a good number of the Evanuris I was suspected most of all, and I must admit it was for reason: Of all the lesser gods, I was the most powerful, politically and in matters of the arcane. And I understood the Conflux more thoroughly than even those of the pantheon. Thank goodness Mythal never entertained the thought that I could have taken it.

“Nothing relevant to the Conflux ever came of the intrigue. Many began to believe it truly had self-destructed, or that whoever took its possession had immediately done away with it. Someone certainly would have noticed any attempt at mobilizing active surveillance and security. Perhaps tossing it away and forgetting about it truly was the best way for Dirthamen to protect it from the rest of us. I suppose it is also probable that it was moved hastily during an emergency and greater security could not be afforded.” Solas exhales and casts his eyes downward for a moment. “I kept expecting the Conflux to resurface during my rebellion. One of them certainly had the thing! Though by that point the Evanuris had half a dozen other ways to utterly destroy the whole of the world. They were so desperate, willing to commit whatever atrocity.” There is an uptick in his tone and his eyes flicker up to meet Lavellan’s: “And for what? Spite? They killed Mythal rather than allow her to entertain the terms of peace I offered, and if I had not acted immediately they would have—“ he stops when he realizes his voice has sped, and he stops abruptly to shake his head.

Lavellan has leaned in to capture his gaze again. His eyes waver though they are trained on her. For all her hate of him she senses a strange distress in his voice and it fascinates her. Softly, she suggests, “It’s not like you at all to want something destroyed for its innate danger, or for the threat it could pose.”

Solas gives an exhaling laugh and he chases away a little smile from his face. He weaves his fingers together at his chest in a seemingly defensive position but his hands lessen the space between the two of them. “The Conflux could perhaps have been a useful tool if we had ever discovered how to wield its power safely. And moreover it is an endlessly engrossing object for study: to think it could reach beyond the Fade and into the Void is exhilarating. It was with a heavy heart I originally came upon the conclusion that it could not exist in a world where the Evanuris coveted its power: their desire for true godhood was so great that they were content to jeopardize the world for its pursuit.”

Lavellan had been lulled by his story and allowed herself to be drawn too close to him by the meter of his voice, she realizes and she pulls back a little towards the stairs’ bannister. “But the Evanuris are still locked away,” the Inquisitor says, “and you claim to have plans to deal with them.”

Solas pulls away himself and glances out the window. “I may have other cause to think the Conflux should be destroyed.” Solas does not specify what that cause is and the short statement and the drift of his focus again sets Lavellan on edge.

Clearly the Inquisitor conveys, “If everything you’re saying is true, it would be a huge risk if the Conflux fell into malicious or negligent hands. You said you figured out how to destroy it. Give us instructions, and the Inquisition can and will finish the job.” She is skeptical still of his wish to see it destroyed and of the story he has told, and some small part of her thinks the Inquisition should keep the Conflux. What if the Inquisition could use it against him somehow and Solas wished to take the world’s last chance out of play?

Solas huffs slightly, frustration returning to his countenance. His usual irate arrogance makes manifest in his tone. “Negligent hands like your own! You would foment a cataclysm with your fumbling! The Conclave and the Breach would seem insignificant compared to the harm that would be done.”

The sudden tenseness from Solas serves to rekindle the anger that had burnt out in Lavellan over the course of his lengthy exposition. If he really wants the Conflux destroyed he should be happy for her offer! She refuses to believe that the Conflux is a problem that she cannot handle. With forced politeness, Lavellan insists, “We’ll get a thousand mages and ten tons of lyrium. If you really want it gone, tell us precisely what to do and we’ll do it.”

“It is not only a matter of power! To do it properly one would have an intricate understanding of the item itself, the activity of the Fade, the behavior of the Veil,” testily Solas delves into a list of magical variables, which she assumes he is doing to overwhelm her and condescend to her, “and coordinate the execution of its destruction perfectly!”

Lavellan reverses her earlier retreat, hurriedly moving towards the her desk and coming close to face with Solas again. She won’t slink around away from him or act like she’s intimidated. “If all the Evanuris studied the orb, you’re not the only one familiar. What about the Witch of the Wilds? If we could locate her—“

Solas cuts Lavellan off, sounding all too certain: “You will be unable to. And her daughter, Morrigan, with her clumsy misapprehensions of elven things, will be of no real help to you either. Her comprehension of the Well of Sorrows’ secrets is sadly hobbled by the limiting paradigms of her thought.”

“You expect me to believe that you’re the only one that can handle this.” He gives a small and grim nod, as if that is simple fact. Solas looks upon the Inquisitor with an expectant frown and she laughs in his face. “And because you’re the only one that can handle this, I’m supposed to give this artifact, which you claim is supremely destructive, over to you. _You’re_ supremely destructive! You’re trying to bring about the end of the world! For all I know, this orb might be the last thing you need to tear down the Veil. Why wouldn’t you lie to get your hands on it?” She chokes back rage to stay calm as he speaks, but rage feels good, especially after she listened to him speak with quiet patience for so long. She looks upon the impassive and snide face of the man who left her so long ago. Eight years ago, Solas walked away from her after the battle against Corypheus, and he has returned twice: once so she could help solve his problems, and now because she has something he wants. Solas is a selfish bastard and she hates him with an almost delectable passion. “You must think that I’m an idiot.”

Solas gives a small grimace in response to her simmering anger. “My apologies, Inquisitor. It was not my intent to insult you.”

Lavellan shakes her head and laughs incredulously. “It wasn’t? After everything you’ve done—“

Solas forces in an interruption. “—of everything I have done, I regret lying to you most of all. My actions have caused a great many a great deal of pain, and for that I do feel guilty. But never was I ashamed! Not until I forced myself to come to terms with how deeply and thoroughly I did wrong you.” Solas reaches out to grab Lavellan’s good hand in his own grasp and she yanks it away before he can touch her.

Wide eyed the two elves stare at each other, her in shock and him in utter horror. She cannot conceptualize him as some god-being beyond her comprehension, not with the urgency and panic in his eyes. There is some pain evident in him, or so it seems—Lavellan knows that he mourns not for her and the pain she has suffered but instead mourns his own compromised values. Solas has insisted to her that he is no monster but he has proved himself a monster in his actions towards her and cannot deny it. Lavellan cuts the stilted silence that has fallen between them with venomous ridicule: “What good does your self-pity do me?”

Solas quickly gathers himself from his brief alarm and is quiet but firm as he answers, “None, it would seem.” He closes his eyes for a moment before continuing with his voice calm and cold, a new rage of his own steeling his words, which to Lavellan teeter on the edge of sanctimony: “More likely than not I will be your death. I do not like thinking about that. It is a paltry show of respect, but one I wish to afford you all the same—while there are some truths I cannot disclose, I would rather not lie to you again.”

Lavellan had once found Solas’s confidence charming. He had first appeared to her as a barefooted vagabond with the demeanor of a prince. The strange man seemed to have nothing in the world but his mind and his pride and had been contented with that. The steadfast dignity of an elven apostate mage—truly the wretched of the earth—was sublimely beautiful to Lavellan. Now she can see that his bearing is the condescension of a god and she finds his demeanor unbearably smug. “Your arrogance astounds me.”

“My arrogance astounds you? You meddle with things you do not understand and are ill-equipped to handle! You seem very intent to gamble the fate of the world you claim to champion on your whims!” Solas accuses, and Lavellan boils inside in abject rage. How dare he of all people criticize her for playing games with others’ lives? “Is your desire to spite me so great that it overrides all your good sense? Perhaps I had misjudged your virtue.”

“Oh, I’m _bad_ because I’m not doing exactly what you want?” she responds with yet another barking laugh. She doesn’t care what power he has: Lavellan isn’t about to grovel to Solas for his approval. Perhaps he is a god of some sort, but he is also her ex-boyfriend. “Typical.”

He gives a sigh wrought with disgust. “I do not know what I expected to come of this.”

“You expected what you always expect: for people to acquiesce to you. You really thought I would take you at your word? That I would do what you demanded? You say you know you’re not a god but you act like you think you’re one.” Lavellan hisses at him and from his angered expression that digs on the hypocrite. Good. She hates to pity herself but he had taken her for everything and she would at least like to see some signs of genuine contrition. “Do you really believe you had a chance of getting anything from me? What welcome did you expect when you showed up here? Did you think I was going to fall to my knees and suck your cock in worship?”

“That’s enough, Adahlen.” He uses her given name to admonish her and it raises goosebumps of loathing on her skin as he scolds her, “Do not be obscene. Your impudence does you few favors.”

“If you think that it’s enough, then get out of my castle,” Lavellan demands. If he wants Skyhold back he’s welcome to try to take it. She clenches her right fist and wonders if she will be able to land a punch before he can blink his eyes to kill her. Whatever combative words are on his lips drop away and he stares at her with a lost, sad look upon his face and that fills her with incomprehensible rage.

His own anguish chokes back a renewed resentment. “You have never made anything easy for me.”

If he hates her, good. In a heated flash Lavellan realizes that she hopes that if she manages to push him that far, that Solas does something terrible to her. She wants him to prove to her that he’s awful, to give her a brand new reason to despise him. Leaning in close to his face Lavellan is about to invite Solas to kill her—kill her or worse—when a knock rings out from the bedroom door bidding both elves to jump in surprise.

“Inquisitor?” It’s the Ambassador’s voice, raised high to call through the heavy wooden door at the bottom of the staircase. From her labored exclamations Josephine has run all the way up the stairs from the Hall and is panting heavily: “Inquisitor! I am sorry for the disturbance, but are you in there?”

“One moment, Josephine!” the Inquisitor calls over the bannister down the staircase. Lavellan looks at Solas, who stands only a couple of inches away from her. The melange of vitriol and melancholy has been replaced by a look of confusion likely mirroring her own. Having Solas in her room looks bad, and Josephine sounds upset—she need not cause the Antivan woman further alarm. “Don’t you dare make a noise,” Lavellan warns. Solas only answers with a frown and she thinks for a moment. “Actually, get in the closet. She might come up here.”

He narrows his eyes slightly, and looks over towards the depression leading to the door. “You expect her to come up into your bedchambers?”

“What sort of question is that?” Lavellan asks.

He stares at her with a look of confusion and dismay and after a moment abruptly shifts his gaze. “That is not to say I am jealous. I would have no right to be.”

She’s a little thrown off that he thought she was accusing him of jealousy. “…What?”

The two elves look into each other’s eyes and his widen as hers narrow. Solas realizes he’s made some sort of mistake: “No. Wait. I merely—“

A knock comes at the door again. Josephine is not typically so hasty—something must be seriously wrong. “Inquisitor, is there someone up there with you? I do not mean to interrupt your private affairs, but it is urgent!”

“No, wait, I—I’m on my way down!” She yells before hissing the word ‘closet’ at him again, pointing towards the slightly ajar door. Though Solas does not have to do anything the Inquisitor asks, with a roll of his eyes he complies as she rushes down the stairs to the entrance to her room and flings open the door. She has an almost electric energy to her from her argument and she speaks quickly with little breath: “Sorry, sorry. I was just thinking through some things aloud. Vocalizing frustrations. Right, so, I have an idea about our little problem in Denerim. We need to get the Grand Cleric in Amaranthine to weigh in on our side, she has sway with some of the arls you said we had to win over. Let’s talk to Divine Victoria to see what she wants of the Chantry, hm? Oh. You look alarmed. What’s the matter?” She looks upon the Ambassador’s horrified and ashamed expression. Lavellan is not surprised because she’s no longer capable of surprise: “Oh no. Something’s happened with the artifact.”

“You are unfortunately correct,” Josephine says, still panting. She shakes her head in woe. “The War Room just received a communication from Dorian. There was a break in at the facility—four people are dead, and the orb is missing.”

Disbelief over the absurdity of the situation alone bubbles forth from her stomach and Lavellan lets out a horrible string of giggles. She can’t wait to go back upstairs and tell Solas the good news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/2 for today. This is the last exposition hell chapter. Sorry about that.
> 
> (I’m also definitely in this to write a hellishly convoluted relationship that is not at all healthy or good.)


	3. The Alliance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Solas is infinitely more powerful than Lavellan, Lavellan intends to harness that power for herself.
> 
> She knows it’s a terrible idea.

“All right,” Lavellan says as she swings open the door of her closet. Her voice brims with an incredulous cheer. “She’s gone.”

Amidst the hanging clothes inside, Solas holds in his hands a loose wine-red cardigan. It’s a silly sight: the god of misfortune shifting through her knitwear with a small frown on his face. He raises the garment up for her to regard. “This sweater was mine originally, I believe. Is it something you still wear? Because if not—“ In the next moment Solas notices the dismayed Inquisitor’s tense posture and fake smile and and he releases a deep sigh. “The Conflux.”

Lavellan broadens her smile and lifts her arms in an exaggerated shrug, though her prosthetic makes the gesture look a little wonky. Solas closes his eyes and with his free hand pinches the bridge of his nose as if his head aches horribly. “It has gone missing, then,” he concludes.

“Well, I don’t have the full report yet. I’m going down to get that in a couple minutes. But apparently yes, someone did steal the orb.” After Lavellan confirms his suspicion, Solas sighs again, opening his eyes and dropping his gaze towards the floor. The light creases in his downcast face are accentuated by his small grimace as a familiar look of tired resignation settles over him. With venom bubbling up through the surface of her fake cheer, the Inquisitor warns, “If this is some ploy by you—“

In response Solas is indignant. “It is most certainly not! If I knew enough about the whereabouts of the orb to alarm you so thoroughly, I would have arranged to procure it myself forthwith instead of puttering about here begging favors from you.”

“Well, I guess you don’t have to waste your time with me anymore,” Lavellan offers curtly. She doesn’t have anything more productive to say as her mind races. She cannot focus entirely on the other elf who stands in front of her or on the developing crisis, or determine how her two problems might be interrelated. She’s good at working under pressure, but right now there is no work to be done: instead she must wait and wonder and muse over absurd hypothetical worst-case scenarios that she runs through in the back of her mind. Lavellan’s angers and anxieties knot.

The frown on Solas’s face deepens and his form tenses. For a moment Lavellan is excited to see signs that the animosity between them might rekindle. She is drawn to engaging with him: Solas is an enemy and fighting him in even the most menial and petty ways is better than sitting silent in bewilderment over the theft. Somehow the close quarters of the closet make the prospect even more enticing and in some irrational way he seems less dangerous here where she can back him into a corner by sheer force of anger and will.

Instead of returning vitriol Solas only gives a mildly annoyed sigh and glances upwards towards the ceiling and shelving of the closet. As his broad shoulders relax he tosses the cardigan to the side with a limp exasperation. It lands alongside a pile of trunks where Lavellan keeps old armor that she no longer wears. Solas adjusts his posture so he is again upright but no longer tense. “You are right. I cannot waste my time on petty argument, and neither can you. What are your plans to handle this?” The question is not demanding but instead oddly firm and gentle. He holds in a breath in what Lavellan feels is anticipation for a moment before adding, “If, that is, you see it fit to tell me.”

Lavellan draws back somewhat defensively but she cannot hold the guard for long. She begrudgingly recognizes Soals’s tone and realizes that he is trying to soothe her and she reluctantly sees that she needs the reprieve from her frantic thoughts. Lavellan must know everything, understand everything, be able to solve everything and until she can lunge in to action she feels immobilized—it is why she is so eager to channel her energies into quarreling. Solas is a terrible pessimist but he is a staid and steady one and he had always been able coax Lavellan into sharing his calm. _What do we know?_ he would ask, and _what is our objective? What resources do we have at our disposal? In what time must we act? Might it be unwise to act at all?_ He doesn’t vocalize the questions for her now but her memory runs through them.

Solas stands in anticipation, his hands folded behind his back. Something about him is inviting her to speak, and knowing full well she should share nothing with him Lavellan does speak: “If you made a guess about what I was going to do, you’d probably be correct. There’s not much I can do apart from the obvious. Right now we need to try to hunt down the thieves. In that part of the Marches, there aren’t many places where they can hide, or bunker down without being noticed. So I guess the first order of business is a man-hunt. We have troops on a couple missions not too far from the site of the break-in that we can divert, and Josephine can probably get some local militias to help. I don’t see what else we can do apart from having our people up there shake down everyone that seems suspicious. The scene of the incident should be searched in case the thieves left anything behind. Hopefully someone’s already working on that.” The plan is unsatisfying and Lavellan believes little will come of the effort. Part of her wishes she could marshal a small party, travel to the Marches, and chase down the thieves herself like she would before she lost her hand. The Inquisitor hates that she must sit around at her desk in Skyhold and wait on news. She notices she is grimacing and that Solas watches her expression of clear displeasure. She gives a soft hum. “All right. I showed you mine, now you show me yours. What are you going to do?”

Lavellan tilts her head back slightly leans back on her heel and watches as Solas is drawn from his recalcitrant position to speak to her. She likes that he follows her little movements, like she followed him and some part of her is relieved to find the tether familiar. Solas speaks with his hands, moving them with graceful but controlled flourishes. “As you know well, I have many eyes in your Inquisition’s rank-and-file. My agents among those troops you mobilize will report to me their search assignments and any information they have been provided by command. From this I shall determine the location where you kept the Conflux and perhaps if I am fortunate the temple where it was found. If I have enough independent agents in the region I may call them to try their hands at tracking down the thieves or monitor their potential streams of egress. In the event that the Inquisition takes back what was stolen I will know from my spies and make plans to claim it for myself.” Solas seems similarly unhappy with the itinerary. She is trying to stay calm now and the part of Lavellan that is angry about his cavalier announcement that he intends to steal from her cannot agitate the rest of her being into rage: knowing his motives Solas’s plan is too obvious a course of action to fully resent. With a bland bitterness Lavellan realizes that Solas will likely know everything she is hiding from him about the situation by the next morning—the theft will serve to place the two of them on equal footing with regard to intelligence. With a familiar resignation Solas anticipates, “I fear what disaster this may cause.”

Lavellan can tell that Solas is not done speaking and she prepares for some sort of chastisement. She can already hear him insisting that her negligence had inevitably doomed the world and that in her ignorance she is unsuited to be a custodian of any of Elvhenan’s great treasures. Instead, Solas sounds incredibly glum but somehow gently paternal as he shakes his head slowly. “I will not berate you for losing the Conflux. It was taken from me once too, and unlike you I knew precisely what danger it posed when I failed to properly ensure it not be taken from me. Much like the Anchor, I suppose.”

The Inquisitor figures that responding with a half-hearted ‘thanks for not being a jerk, I guess’ is inappropriate and after a while she settles on giving the increasingly distraught mage an empty reassurance that perhaps not all is lost. She can fixate on worst case scenarios but she can also conjure up the best ones. It is only frustrating to her when she can do nothing to ensure that they happen: “Maybe it won’t be that bad. We don’t even know if the thieves know what it does or if they just want to sell it. People kill all the time for much, much less than the amounts Tevinter magisters and Southern eccentrics are willing to pay for magic artifacts. In a few weeks the orb might surface at some auction house.” Even if it works out so well, she hates the idea of sitting on her hands—well, hand—until she can recover it.

“And when it does, the two of us can begin our fight anew,” Solas finishes somewhat sourly.

”I don’t know what you’re so down about. You could end up getting a complete windfall,” Lavellan concedes with a roll of her eyes.

Solas gives a small laugh that belies a sad but genuine warmth. He smiles at Lavellan and despite the context of the moment for a split second she forgets to hate him. “For what it is worth, I have missed your optimism.”

“Optimistic for you, maybe.” Involuntarily Lavellan matches the real smile he gives and right then she has a terrible idea.

The mage’s smile wanes away with the exhalation of a small sigh. In the legends the Dread Wolf cackles to himself maniacally because he is so pleased with his great wit, but Solas is always sighing like a moping court jester with a frown painted across his face. Lavellan has never before seen a monster so comically maudlin as the old man. “I suppose I should now take my leave. Even if the Inquisition retakes the artifact it is unlikely that it will be necessary or wise for me to come speak with you again.” Solas gives a slight bow of his head to indicate his intent to exit the closet’s close quarters. Where she stands Lavellan partially blocks the doorway and he takes a step to the side to begin making his way out into the main space of Lavellan’s bedchamber. “It is strange to say farewell to you once more—”

“—Solas, wait.” Abruptly Lavellan has shifted her body in front of Solas to impede his path. The two elves are of a height and they hold their positions for a moment. Solas wears an aspect of confusion and in a milder way Lavellan mirrors his uncertainty: she has no idea what she is doing in the least. The quiet between them teems with a different sort of tension than the torrid, stilted sort which had built during their earlier fight when she had antagonized him. Instead Lavellan fills with a bubbly excitement as she faces Solas, flitting and dynamic though they both hold their bodies still. She thinks of the long and brimming moments before their first kiss as she stares in to his unbearably pretty grey eyes and prepares to prove herself a fool.

The unwelcome memory of their lips meeting compels Lavellan to spit out her offer: “We should work together.”

“I—“ Solas starts to respond but stops himself, withdrawing back and folding his arms over his chest. Without losing his air of incredulity he opens his mouth again presumably in response but immediately shakes his head. He raises his hand to cover the lower part of his face and closes his eyes as if he is withdrawn to thought. When he is finally ready to speak, a dry and dull note of mirth raises in his voice: “Inquisitor. I beg your pardon.”

Lavellan says with a laugh, “If you think I’ve gone insane, you’re probably right.” It’s impossible to deceive a mad woman, she hopes, even for king of mischief Fen’Harel.

* * *

  
The Inquisitor returns to her now empty bedroom after meeting with the Ambassador and the Commander. She had been given a full briefing on the break-in and had helped plan the initial response, which does not differ much than the plan she had conveyed to Solas other than the addition of some hastily devised provisions that might obscure the location from spies in the ranks. Even if she plans to tell Solas himself everything, they still must keep their secrets from the Qun. Lavellan does not inform Josephine and Cullen about her surprise visitor or the alliance the two had hastily made. She has rationalized her offer and disclosures to Solas to herself: if Solas is infinitely more powerful than her, she will harness that power for herself. She will use him and his magics like he uses her and her army. Lavellan knows on almost all levels that this is the errand of a fool. If she dies, Lavellan figures that the world can find someone better to champion it once she goes to her deserved fate. The hahrens had always told her that if she acted rashly as she was wont to do the Dread Wolf would gobble her down alive and she has washed and bared her throat for his fangs.

Before she goes to rendezvous with her nemesis Lavellan changes into less conspicuous casual wear: she does not intend to spend the day running about in the military regalia she had worn for the memorial service. She has become efficient at dressing with one hand, and most of her clothing has been specially modified with latches and drawstrings to make the chore easier for her. She loathes the handful of formal items that servants must help her don. The idea of being unable to put clothes on her own body is deeply upsetting to her. She clumsily tucks her black blouse into her dark pants and secures it under a stiff vest. As she fumbles with the buttons she tries not to think about how her current disability would have left her incompetent and indigent in the wilds where she was born.

Her boots (though her People tend to forego any footwear more substantial than wraps, Lavellan has always liked shoes—it is the least of the ways she was terrible at being Dalish) and their buckles are designed well enough to be put on easily with one hand, but gloving her right hand can be particularly enervating at times. She holds down the corner of the glove against the desk with her already-sheathed prosthetic and gingerly slips just enough of the real one in before reaching the point where she can tug the glove down with her mouth. She wonders if Solas would pity her if he saw the slow and miserable process of her dressing. The idea makes her sick.

Her stomach swims as she reflects on her stupid plan. At least she didn’t tell him the exact location of the facility. She tries to convince herself that if Solas intends to use the artifact to his own nefarious ends, she will be able to do something to stop him from acquiring it if she is with him in person. She knows the thought is foolish, and she knows that she would never have made such an agreement with an enemy that was not Solas.

Lavellan pulls an ascot from her dresser and goes about the silly process of tying the knot with one hand. She looks in the mirror to guide her. Her skin is the color of dark ecru and it is marked with lines of green. She regards her intricate tattoos and she stares at the thin lines trying not to think of how Solas had asked her to remove them. The cravat she ties is a rich golden saffron and halfway through her manipulations Lavellan recalls that Solas had remarked a couple of times that he enjoyed the color on her: it brought out an amber in her eyes, he had claimed.

Lavellan thinks of how her face has changed in the past decade and suddenly feels sensitive to how Solas might see her. She wonders if he finds her attractive still. She is angry that she finds herself asking whether or not he would still want her. (He had tried to touch her hand, she thinks, but he had recoiled in terror and disgust. She does not try to puzzle out why.) Though she has never lacked for confidence Lavellan knows she is not a beautiful woman. She is scarred and crooked-nosed and her features have been called plain and mannish. She knows now that Solas cannot stand to look upon her tattoos. The former warrior is far less delicate than an elf should be in form—Solas had once greatly admired her musculature but despite her attempts to practice clumsy right-handed swordplay in the training yard much of her body’s past definition has faded in her retirement from adventure. She only has one arm, stress has given her dark circles beneath her eyes, and she is no longer young. Though Solas is old and bald he is handsome in a delicate way: perhaps he is too handsome now for her. It is a stupid, shameful line of thought that she has no reason to entertain but she bitterly combs through her short hair to check if the jet black of her curls and waves has at long last begun to give way to grey. Thankfully she finds no signs of this.

Lavellan, now thirty-five, wonders if she’ll live to look older than Solas. His appearance has not changed since the last time she saw him. He either perpetually maintains, for some reason, middle age or he ages so slowly that the six years since the Exalted Council and the four years before that since she first met him have left no discernible mark on him. Though she had thought on it earlier in the day Lavellan must remind herself just how ridiculously old Solas is. When they were together they had been a couple that was noticeably mismatched in age, drawing the teasing derision of a number of their friends. (“How do you say ‘daddy’ in Elvish?” had grown tiresome especially fast.) Lavellan had asked Solas about his birth date once, and without bothering to approximate he had claimed, perhaps sincerely, that no record had been made to mark the day. As such she had surmised he was older than her by just shy of two decades—not by untold thousands of years. In his absence Lavellan has often very bitterly ruminated on the implications of this fact but after seeing him in all his barefoot melancholy the idea that he is some eternal being beyond her comprehension seems laughable regardless of the truth of the matter. Solas has always been bewilderingly strange, but now he seems almost unreal.

Lavellan will not touch him. Solas was supposedly there and solid but she has no way of knowing for sure and part of her fears that he may be some hallucination of hers or a dream brought in the Fade. If she is losing her mind to her fixations he is most certainly the vision it would make manifest. Lavellan may have been insane to offer to work with Solas but she had not done so because she desired proximity to her former lover. Her prior outbursts, contrarily, had all been incited purely by him and his maddening presence. Lavellan loathes the excitement and frenzy that she had felt the moment Solas appeared to her and she loathes how childishly eager she had been to bait him. What had she wanted, for him to become so irate with her that he would decide to shut her up by pinning her down and fucking her?

The answer is most certainly no—there is no world in which she wants to have sex with the horrible man. Besides, Solas would _never_.

Solas’s visage is hatable and for the sake of despising him anew she thinks of each awful pale freckle that dapples the bridge of his nose, the vilely endearing dimple on his chin, and his sickeningly delicate reddish eyelashes. It’s a bad idea, because she has to fight not to think of how the soft fullness of his lips offsets the sharpness and severity of his other features, or about how his shoulders are broad and his body’s frame is fantastically large and solid for that of an elf. She remembers how easily he had lulled her to calm with the tone of his voice, gentle and firm. Over the years Lavellan managed to convince herself that she was not half so attracted to Solas as she remembered being and she is now well aware that she lied to herself. Of all the rooms to show up in, her bedchambers. And in that stupid fur-lined coat, too. In her little dance with death, she could have torn it off of him.

She involuntarily fantasizes of the thrill of being pounded into the mattress beneath her shadow-clad trickster god, and of the sweet but shameful comfort of making love to an ex-boyfriend.

Bad, bad, _bad_. Lavellan shakes those horrible muddled thoughts and pulls on a large coat with deep pockets and big arms. Her blouse already has roomy billowing sleeves that cinch at her wrists but she prefers to obscure the prosthetic with its clunky pads and straps further. She finds the jointed metal runners that help secure the hand to its bracing above her elbow to be especially conspicuous and obtrusive. The outerwear falls loosely open over the tight vest and trousers she wears.

Once she is dressed Lavellan goes through her top drawer looking for her personal sending crystal and shoves it into one of her deep pockets. Before she shuts the drawer, she notices a burlap bundle that she recognizes as the woven case holding Solas’s old paintbrushes. He had left them behind with his mural when he vanished, and one slow day not long after his departure Lavellan had spent a sentimental hour cleaning them in case he ever came back. Most of his other abandoned affects had been stashed in the small cell in the north wall that served as his private quarters and she had never quite worked up the nerve to place the brushes amidst the piles that now sit gathering dust. Lavellan takes the brushes and stows them in the pocket opposite her sending crystal and her heavy coin purse. She might as well give them to Solas now.

She wonders if he still paints.

Bundled all under a large, dark-colored scarf dappled in gold thread paisley Lavellan sets out to meet Solas. She manages to go unobtrusively from the castle, slipping through a hidden servants’ door onto a bright and snow-dusted mountain path. A blast of wind greets her and she shivers heartily, her earlier fatigue and pain forgotten in her ill-conceived pursuit of adventure.


	4. The Apothecary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An uneasy peace settles between Solas and the Inquisitor, and the Inquisitor meets someone Solas may consider a friend.

Lavellan encounters Solas waiting amidst a thicket of trees and with a small flourish he ushers her to join him. He is welcoming and almost excited, with a small smile that draws her in towards him. The silly old man is barefoot in the snow. “Come follow me! We have a short while to walk before we reach the eluvian,” Solas beckons. As she nears Lavellan notices that there are no footprints behind him in the light dusting of snow and she wonders if he uses magic to cover them. Solas takes a few steps further into the thicket and Lavellan finds herself eager to follow. It has been so long since she has gone on any sort of adventure, and she can feel her heart beating in the back of her throat.

“Oh, you’re actually here!” Lavellan exclaims as she comes close to him. In time with the ends of her scarf, her jacket, and the hair atop her head, the thick fur-lined robes Solas wears sway heavily and lazily in the wind. Jokingly she adds, “I thought for sure I was going to be stood up.”

“You expected me to stand you up?” Solas asks with fake indignation in his voice. “I didn’t think I had been _that_ bad of a boyfriend.”

Part of Lavellan is releieved for the new peace between her and Solas. “No. As much as I hate to admit it you were actually a pretty good boyfriend.” Another part of her is still angry and bitter and is willing to ruin her grand plans for the sake of bickering. She gives a wistful sigh as she reigns that part in—mostly: “I mean, aside from all the lies you told me and how you hid your identity from me.”

Solas takes the nasty jab in good stride, a blitheness in his voice giving way to notes of contrition: “I did also leave you, refuse to explain why, and shortly thereafter disappear.” Despite the sour reminiscence, Solas’s tone is still soft and friendly as he continues, “But we digress. It would have been imprudent of me to leave you here and move forward on my own. You only told me the approximate location of the facility before we parted ways, and locating it would still take a good deal of time without further information. Besides, we are going to investigate an Inquisition hold! Even if the personnel does not know me as Fen’Harel by sight, I doubt your soldiers will appreciate a strange elf combing the grounds of their secret facility. They certainly will not answer my questions. Meanwhile you will be afforded easy access and the staff’s full faith. Therefore it is important you are present.”

Lavellan reminds herself that despite the little plays at familiarity and fondness Solas is keeping her around because he has use for her. That’s fine—Lavellan has her own uses for him as well. “So how close can your network bring us?” Lavellan asks. While the mirror pathways can take her across the continent in minutes, it’s also possible that the two will still need to travel for hours or even days from the network’s nearest exit to their final destination depending on placement. “Here, take a look.” She reaches awkwardly across her body to produce a folded map of the region from a pocket on the inside of her big coat. She had swiped the map, a surveyor’s write-up of the area with no military information on it, from the War Room on her way out of her briefing with her advisors.

Solas unfolds the map and almost immediately he and the Inquisitor are bid to jump in surprise the parchment swells with a gust of wind and billows outwards and up out of his grasp. With a little sound of surprise he quickly retains a corner of it and the rest stops its wild swing when it catches on Lavellan’s prosthetic, waving like a flag bent around the false arm. Stretched up and out the two come close as they somewhat awkwardly pull the wriggling map back down. The quick capture has brought Lavellan close enough to feel the warmth from Solas’s body and both elves turn their focus sharply to the map. “The facility is right there,” Lavellan says, pointing to the outline of a drawn tower.

With the parchment firmly in his hands, Solas at last declares, “Ah! You said that the Crossroads at Makria was the nearest town, but I did not expect it to be so close by. As I mentioned I have an eluvian very close to the the town center—the thoroughfares make it an ideal place for agents nearby to come with information. Though I suppose I will have to move the mirror elsewhere after this now that you see the location. Our trip should not be long. Traveling by horse it should take little more than an hour.” He pauses and quickly frowns before asking, “Will you be able to ride by yourself?”

For a moment Lavellan is confused. Of course she can ride a horse. What sort of question is that? “What? Oh. Because of my hand.” Lavellan does not like the concern in Solas’s voice. He is her enemy and doesn’t need to worry over her or baby her! She forces a laugh so she does not seem indignant. “I had some knights in the horseback units show me how to rein one-handed pretty much as soon as mine got cut off. I’m good.”

Solas seems to accept that and he folds the map, careful not to let it catch in the wind again, before handing it to the Inquisitor to tuck in her pockets for safekeeping. He makes small-talk: “On the map I saw that the hall is called ‘Domumonedula.’ That is a Tevinter name, and a bit of a mouthful.”

“It’s known more commonly as Clattering Keep,” Lavellan replies. “I’ve never been out there myself, but the locals say it’s haunted.”

The mage perks up very slightly at the mention of a haunting. “Spirits?”

“Birds,” Lavellan disappoints Solas. “From what I’ve heard a lot of them roost there, and they are apparently very loud and very creepy.”

In response to that Solas hums sadly. “That is significantly less interesting.” Lavellan can tell that his mind is not on birds. Solas glances through the trees behind Lavellan and up at the walls of the castle that loom in the distance past the tree line. Eking between the shadows of the pines sunshine falls over his high cheekbones and bare head, casting light upon his forlorn aspect. Solas stays quiet for a long moment, as he often stays when his thoughts begin to meander towards memories of things long lost in the march of time. Skyhold had been his home once, too, Lavellan thinks. Twice, perhaps. Solas shakes himself from the short reverie. “Did you tell your advisors where you were going, and with whom?”

“Oh, no,” Lavellan says with a chuckle that is both warm and bitter at once. “Unless we find something useful, I’ve just gone off on a walk to clear my mind. If you were going to kill me or hold me hostage you would have done that already, so I don’t think I need to put them on notice that that might happen. I don’t want anyone to know how stupid I am unless I have something to show for it first.” She is somewhat incredulous at her own foolishness—for years, she has been so careful, and now she’s off doing _this_. The Inquisitor had done the worst damage (disclosing even vague information to Solas—secrets from him are their only weapon) the fastest so she could not walk back on her decision. Otherwise she might have thought to tell Cullen and Josephine about what she intends to do and had them talk her out of doing something terribly reckless.

The elves walk along together on the wooded mountainside as they head away from the castle. Lavellan, who tries to keep her eyes trained on the ground at her feet as they descend into a shallow gorge, can feel Solas glancing over her periodically. Before she can ask what he wants, Solas says abruptly, “You do not trust me, yet you come to me to aide my investigation alone. I must admit that I am a little confused.”

“It’s _my_ investigation, and _you’re_ the one aiding it,” Lavellan insists primarily as a joke. She has to play like she thinks she’s the boss here, but feels that her bravado is a little empty. At her assertion, Solas smiles in a way that ties something inside of her into knots. Quickly she continues: “I guess I just don’t see how it hurts. With how thoroughly you’ve infiltrated the main body of our troops, any general call to search would give you all the information we had hidden from you by tomorrow morning. And as I said, if you wanted me dead, I’d be dead. If you can get in my room undetected, you don’t need to lure me anywhere for anything.”

Solas gingerly skips between two rocks on the opposite side of a broad stream set beneath them in a ravine, catching himself on both a tree trunk and a hanging branch to steady himself as he lands. A number of red leaves still on the branch detach and fall to stick on the smooth surface of the rock. Solas turns back to her and asks, “So then your decision was motivated not by a ‘why,’ but by a ‘why not?’” Still holding the trunk, he leans towards the gap and offers Lavellan his hand once he is on the other side. “I can catch you and pull you in if you jump. We’re almost there.”

Lavellan appraises the situation. Even though she is no longer as athletic as she once was, she does not consider the jump is very far. The landing spot seems dangerous—it the ground is steep and uneven adn appears slick with moss and possibly ice, and Solas’s landing had certainly looked wobbly. He had used both hands to steady himself. She is already relying on him to use the eluvian network and does not want to accept his help any more than she has to. Yet at the same time, Lavellan realizes that jumping without him and falling would be horrendously embarrassing. Lavellan decides she will not not take the offer Solas extended her and instead she walks down off and around the rock and through the stream between the two of them in her waterproof boots. “It turns out that it’s very shallow,” she calls up to him from the bottom. Solas frowns down at her as he waits on the rock ledge above—she is well aware she is wasting time on account of her pride.

“But to answer your question, I want to do this myself,” Lavellan answers as she trudges up the steep embankment on the other side to meet him, “and not sit around in Skyhold waiting around while a hundred other people make messes of things. And besides, right now I have better information about your whereabouts and actions than the Inquisition has had in about six years.” It’s only half-flippant.

Solas, still perched above her on the rock, leans against the trunk of a tree and looks down on her in appraisal. Somewhat fondly he says, “You have always been willing to walk straight into the middle of the trouble. But at the same time, you have been very wary and conservative in your actions since the Exalted Council—as I waited for you to rejoin me today I began to wonder if your departure from caution was part of a plot to lead me into some sort of trap.” He waits patiently as Lavellan joins him, carefully bracing her prosthetic against the rock wall as she pulls herself up through the last and steepest part of her approach.

Lavellan is beginning to tire a little but she will not let Solas see that. She doubles over to brush some twigs and sticks off of her knees and shins and takes a quick breath there. “Oh, that would be _amazing_ ,” she admits with a laugh that he joins. The two are essentially giggling between themselves, Lavellan notices, but it is not quite like old times. People had always described Solas as quiet and humorless but he had always been full of tiny laughs for her—tiny laughs that she had absolutely delighted in coaxing out of him. When they were together he would smile at something she said and it made her feel so special, so loved. Now she feels as if they are uneasily sucking in and forcing out lumpy and misshapen semblances of humor for the sake of dispelling tension. Because she does not want to admit that she had indeed thought very briefly of attempting to ensnare him, Lavellan conjures a ridiculous situation: “Just imagine. Completely out of the blue, the Inquisition discovers that you’re still looking for a magical orb you lost forever ago. So we decided to pretend to find it because we somehow knew you would try and chase it down personally, and now I’m going to have to spend the rest of the day convincing you to walk backwards into a volcano.”

The two continue up and on towards the small mouth of a mountain cave. The bright light of the mirror glimmers over the boulders and roots protruding into the walkway ahead of her from its place deeper inside the rock. The Inquisition knows the mountains around Skyhold well and patrols have checked this cave before. Solas and his agents move the eluvians they spy on her fortress through, Lavellan realizes. Solas carries on the conversation, “That would be impressive if you managed that. The way I imagined your plan against me, after we parted ways you would tell your Commander to ready a thousand men trained as templars. Then you would prepare to lead me into their midst for an impromptu ambush.”

Lavellan gives a small exhaling sigh because Solas has guessed her abandoned line of thought near exactly. As she headed to her debriefing about the theft earlier of course the Inquisitor had considered telling Cullen and Josephine about a change in plans: their evasive nemesis had appeared in her bedroom and they needed to forget about the orb for a few minutes and trap Solas while they could. Templars, with their power to negate magic, would be a necessary component of the trap. Despite the abolition of the Circle, Cassandra’s new Seekers and old templars like Cullen would still teach knights how to counter the magic of maleficars, but these knights and the remnants of the Templar Order number a mere fraction of what the Order had numbered when they fell under Corypheus’s sway at Therinfall Redoubt. Only another fraction of this force took the full regimen of lyrium or had their powers as Seekers fully developed, and the ones at the call of the Inquisition are spread across the continent. Even if there had been time to marshal this tiny force, Lavellan has no idea if it will be sufficient to counter the power of Solas’s magic. She remembers the damage Solas alone did to the Qunari at the Exalted Council—he might very well be capable of panicking, routing, and slaughtering a force of mage-hunters. While she’ll endanger her own life for silly things, the Inquisitor does not know enough about the risks involved to commit the lives of her troops to such a mission. Besides, as just shown, it’s exactly the sort of thing Solas would expect of her.

There is, however, one thing about the scenario that Lavellan is fairly certain of, and she’ll make Solas aware that she knows it. As they walk through the mouth of the cave, Lavellan fixes a very noticeable stare on Solas. When looks at her finally she makes sure that he can see her roll her eyes at him. The mage blinks at her in confusion and asks, “What?”

Lavellan somewhat forcibly insists, “It would _absolutely not_ require _a thousand templars_ to subdue you.”

Solas smiles as if to concede the point to her before asking, “Subdue me? You intend to hold me captive?” He seems amused by the idea.

As much as she has thought over the years about how she would love to kill him with her own hands, the Inquisitor does not want to execute Solas and she does not want to talk to Solas about not wanting to execute Solas. She decides she will end the discussion here. “Yes,” Lavellan answers dryly. She feels that he is looking at her waiting for a descriptive response still, so she decides she might make him balk: “What do you expect me to say, that I would do it in chains, for my own personal enjoyment?”

“Oh, no. I—” Solas stumbles, and Lavellan is not sure if she is imagining a slight flush of pink on his cheeks before she herself quickly averts her gaze. Any coloration on either of their faces is drowned out by the silver glow of the magic mirror as they draw closer to it. “Here we are,” he says. “Are you prepared?” The undulating surface is set inside of a gold frame that at once reflects the two elves and reveals the passage beyond. The shimmer and the subtle hum of magic is viscerally welcoming to Lavellan. Suddenly enrapt, she stares at her gently warping reflection and that of the man close beside her.

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s go,” Lavellan answers.

“You’re impatient,” Solas observes, and suddenly he is once again wearing a smile.

“That would make two of us, wouldn’t it?”

Solas responds to the accusation by beckoning Lavellan towards the mirror: “Shall we?”

* * *

  
Lavellan’s dark hair catches on the warm breeze in the pathway of the mirror network, her thick waves and curls shifting slightly with the wind. The corridor, elevated amongst clouds in a bright blue sky, is lined with pink golden trees abloom in otherworldly colors and Lavellan feels as if the path is similar but not altogether the same as the ones she had traversed before. “I suppose I should tell you what I learned about the theft during my debriefing.”

“I certainly would be interested in listening,” Solas answers.

Lavellan tries to find a way to explain it as quickly as possible: “After I heard that we had unearthed an artifact that resembled the Anchor, I ordered it to be taken to the nearest secure place for safekeeping. It was a lucky coincidence that Clattering Keep had a laboratory staffed with alchemists and magical researchers, which allowed us to begin studying the Conflux immediately. Because of the circumstances of its discovery, the research involved a Tevinter archeologist called Evander Serranus and a number of his students.”

“I am familiar with his work—and his partnership with the Inquisition,” Solas interrupts. “So his involvement means you found the Conflux during your Tevinter Chantry excavation. By chance, none of my agents were assigned a detail. Once I determined the dig wasn’t a cover for any mission more interesting, I decided that it would be a waste of my resources to monitor.” He glances up and out into the blue expanse that is divided up by innumerable floating pathways of bright stone. Solas seems somewhat embarrassed by his oversight.

“I got Dorian to come out to Clattering Keep to make sure the Tevinters stayed in line and to help with research where he could, so with Dorian, we had about seven Inquisition researchers working to figure out the Conflux. And then there was Serranus and the four students he brought with him. At some point this morning only Serranus, one of his students, and three Inquisition researchers were in the lab. We’re not sure exactly what happened, but unknown assailants killed Serranus, his student, and two of our mages, and badly injured the remaining one before leaving him for dead. They blew out the back wall of the laboratory to escape with the Conflux through, and as soon as they made that hole, there was another bigger detonation that took out a portion of the outer wall of the keep.”

“That would have to be a massively powerful explosion. Do we know if it came from inside or outside the premises?”

”That wasn’t in the report. There are some holes in this that I’m hoping I can fill myself when we get there. I also haven’t heard any theories about how the thieves got into the castle. Nothing unusual was reported at any of the exits or entrances, and I have people whose full time jobs are to keep those secure. Maybe they watched the guards walking the ramparts enough to find a hole in the patrol schedule and went over the walls, but it’s not likely.”

“Who do you think is responsible for this? Surely you must have some ideas.”

“Well, there were apparently some weird bandits who had been trying to raid artifacts from the ruin where we found it, but from what I understand they weren’t very organized. It’s still a possibility though. From the briefing, a lot of our people on site think that it might be Tevinters who either were unaffiliated with our archeology partners or were working with them and betrayed them. Cullen and Josephine suggested it might be you, and we also had to consider that someone in the facility staff went rogue,” Lavellan says. “The good news is that it’s probably not the Qun. Device fragments were picked out of the rubble and some alchemists who worked in the facility tested them for explosive residue. People on site were afraid at first that it might have been gaatlock that took out the walls, but the bombs were all lyrium sand. I heard they were probably mining charges. Oh, and from what the mages on site say, the explosion on the outer wall definitely involved magic.”

“Magic. I suppose that does support the Tevinter suspicion.” He hums to himself in thought for a few moments before motioning courteously to Lavellan that it is time to turn. The path leads down through a floating garden. The hanging, bud-laden tendrils of plants overflow from smooth marble baskets suspended in the air and they fall like chains of teardrop crystals adorning a chandelier. At the end of the garden walkway stands a bright silver mirror which has its frame wrapped in voluminous ivy.

Under the elves’ feet, the grass peeks from between the moon-white stones. The color of the blades is not quite the green of any grass Lavellan has seen and instead verges on a lush blue. In the margins between the path and the edge of the platform where the grass stretches uninterrupted, the turf looks at once perfectly manicured and unimaginably soft and deep, as if Lavellan would sink down below its surface halfway to her knee if she pressed her foot there. Something in her wants to tread barefoot on the grass. The walkway she and Solas amble along is flanked by garden lattices laden with vines that produce flowers of bright cerulean and purple whose petals glow in a cool luminescence. Lavellan stops for a second to regard one of the strange flowers more closely. She focuses in on the delicate stripes that adorn each petal and as she admires the plant, a light and pleasant ringing like distant Chantry bells plays in her head somewhere beyond her pointed ears. Something here is deeply _right_ to her, and the overwhelming feeling worries her enough that she rouses herself to rush along after Solas.

Noticing Lavellan’s haste, Solas says, “Your energy is impressive. I expected the lingering effects of the Anchor to have a much more deleterious effect on your health.”

“Oh, I’m held together entirely by spite,” Lavellan replies with a laugh. “No offense, but I wasn’t about to let your magic just kill me.”

He gives her a grin that is at once tremendously soft and horribly cutting. “Good.”

Lavellan supposes she should say it, so haltingly she does: “By the way. Thank you. I know you sent me treatment instructions.”

Solas looks aside at the flowers himself for a moment before they exit the lattice tunnel. He is morose when he looks back towards Lavellan. “It was the least I could do.” It’s true that it’s the least he can do, and it seems like he is aware of the pain that quite frequently haunts her life. Solas knows better than anyone what her prognosis is, Lavellan realizes as together the two make their approach to the mirror.

Less to comfort him and more to appear strong, Lavellan insists, “There are more good days than bad ones. Really,” and with this she steps through the frame of the eluvian and into the mirror’s shimmering gossamer.

* * *

 

Lavellan is followed by Solas out of the eluvian into a dark room stacked with piles of books. A number of mirrors of various sizes line the walls, and Lavellan does not see her reflection in all of them. Strange accoutrements are hanging from the ceiling and she nearly hits her head on a glass terrarium. Rashvine spills out of an opening in the orb, and upon looking around Lavellan sees that the room plays host to a good number of plants and fungi she recognizes things that grow in the shade or in caves. The air is heavy and at once damp and smoky with the sweet and spiced scent of burning incense.

Behind Solas, Lavellan edges out of the dark room and into what appears to be a store front. Most of the room is still cast in shade but towards the windows there are stacks of potted plants soaking in the sunlight, blocking the rays from the rest of the room on their shelves. Many of the plants look unseasonable for autumn and the room is warmer than it should be. Though crowded with merchandise and strange jars and bottles brimming with liquids and powders, the store seems empty of staff or customers. Despite the seeming vacancy, a sign reading “ _The Apothecary Is In_ ” rests on a counter alongside a set of measures and a brass pill press.

A pile of cloth behind the service bar begins to shift and in its shambling it reveals itself to be an old elf. His face is a mass of wrinkles, and is partially obscured by the unruly white hair that sprouts forth like overgrown grass from the brim of his hat broken-down hat. The elf turns to the two of them slowly. Next to him in a basket sits a dark grey bird and he feebly strokes its feathered breast with a withered finger as he looks upon Solas: “Oh, my. Look who is here! Your people who come and go are nice enough but it has been a long time since you paid a visit to the apothecary yourself, young man.”

Lavellan watches as Solas bows his head. “How long has it been, hahren? Two years?” He calls the apothecary ‘elder’ despite being unimaginably older than him—and the apothecary in turn calls him ‘young man’—what does the apothecary know of him? Perhaps it is sarcastic. Solas’s tone is distant but there is some familiarity in the exchange of titles. This man is one of Solas’s agents, she is aware, but is he also possibly his friend?

The apothecary mumbles sadly and looks at his bird. “Miss Maude here had just found her way to me around the last time, as I remember. Did what I could for her wing, but she still can’t fly, no.” The bird nuzzles the man’s hand before peering at the visitors with bead-black eyes. She makes a cawing noise and rouses herself from rest in her basket at the apothecary’s side, clumsily hopping across the counter towards the newcomers. The bird studies first Solas and then the Inquisitor, tilting her head as she blinks at them. “She’s a sweet girl but she’s still a jackdaw. Anything shiny you have, Maude wants for herself. Watch your buttons. She’s been known to pluck bright ones like those right off.”

Lavellan glances over to the basket the bird left behind and from where she is standing she can see the little nest is filled with a number of buttons, broken cutlery, other various scraps of metal, bits of bottle-green glass, beads, and a few pieces that appear to be good jewelry. The little collection sparkles in the dim light of the storefront like a dragon’s treasure hoard. With a small grin Lavellan involuntarily places her fake hand over the shiny golden button on her chest. “It looks like we have a talented little criminal here,” she says as she scratches the bird beneath the beak with her finger. The jackdaw cackles appreciatively and tilts her head up for more attention. “She’s lucky we’re chasing after bigger and badder thieves.”

Solas glances down at Maude the jackdaw but does not reach out to pet her, leaving his hands folded just below his waist. He surveys the room, his gaze lingering on an overburdened bookshelf as if he is trying to read the titles stuffed into the shelves. Noticeably colder than in his conversation with Lavellan during their walk together but still somehow kindly, Solas says, “Some months ago I asked an agent to deliver to you a package. Did you ever receive it?”

The apothecary nods and takes a while to do so. “ _Fiacre‘s Herbiary of the Mundane and Arcane._ Not an easy text to come by at all, but you found it for me. I never did get a chance to thank you for it.” After bidding his thanks to Solas, the old elf looks at the Inquisitor and waits until he is certain she is paying attention before he continues, “Young lady. This one here is a good man but if he ever gives you horticulture advice,” he raises a shaky finger and points it directly at Solas, “don’t you go listening to it.”

Lavellan glances at Solas and he is in the midst of failing to suppress an abashed frown that is very clearly deepening through his veneer of disinterest. He seems unsettled as he looks up and away towards the oddly-shaped jars of dried herbs that line the walls of the shop. Lavellan reassures the apothecary, “Oh, you don’t need to worry about that. I’ve seen Solas try to keep houseplants before.” _Try_ is a key word in her sentence.

The apothecary slowly swivels his head to squint at a suddenly deeply uncomfortable Solas before letting out a cough that resembles a laugh. “You do have a proper name! I knew your parents couldn’t have looked in your crib and called you ‘Dread Wolf,’” he mumbles. “Solas, Solas. Good name. It fits you better.”

Politely but curtly, Solas replies, “I think so too, hahren. However, it is a name ill-suited for the task I now undertake.”

The apothecary nods. “I suppose I understand. So I assume, young man, that you did not come this way to talk with me. What do you need here?”

“My associate and I have business nearby. We are merely passing through.” Solas looks to the window, peering intently between the shelved plants. “I suppose I should ask—there was a robbery at a castle near here called Clattering Keep this morning. An artifact belonging to our people was stolen. Have you heard anything of the matter?”

The apothecary shakes his head. “The Keep was empty for so long, home only to the jackdaws.” Maude makes a cackling noise as she settles back in upon her treasure protectively. “We heard around that someone had moved in and saw wagons maybe heading up that way some time ago, but nothing about an artifact being in the castle, and nothing today about a robbery, no.”

Solas thanks the apothecary and leads Lavellan out of the shop. There is a nicely tended flower box along the front of the windows overflowing with bright chrysanthemums that match the shop’s pristinely painted but slightly faded “ _CROSSROADS APOTHECARY_ ” sign, and Lavellan wonders if the old elf tends to the garden on the other side of the mirror.

”Your agents only know you as Fen’Harel?” Lavellan asks Solas once they are outside the shop. It is a strange question of sorts, and while Lavellan waits for Solas to answer she takes in the scene around her. The town seemes bigger and more populous than Lavellan had expected. In the brisk cold of the autumn morning, scarf-clad locals on foot or with mulecarts hurry past the big wagons of bundled-up travelers drawn by horse, oxen, or the occasional hart. From where Lavellan stands she can see down a dirt street to a cobbled square where what looks like a bustling market of farmers’ produce and merchant goods out front of a Chantry boasting a modest but respectable steeple. Dark grey jackdaws circle around the stone tower and the birds seem to be in good cheer as they cackle amongst themselves.

Solas, who is in a much less jovial mood than the birds, turns to close the door securely behind Lavellan. A bell on the inside can be heard still ringing after the door swings shut and Solas sighs. “To answer your question: Yes. A good majority of them do not know me by any name other than Dread Wolf. There are exceptions. For instance, those who have served in the Inquisition since the war remember that then I was called ‘Solas,’ but they believe that the name is no more than an alias to be donned and discarded at need.”

”I’m sorry that I—“

”—you shouldn’t be.” Solas gives a small wave of his hand. “I have no sensible reason to keep my given name from that man, or any of my agents.”

“Is the apothecary a friend of yours?” At once Lavellan is deeply bothered and dearly relieved at Solas’s odd rapport with his agent. How dare he speak kindly to the people of this world—people he intends to kill? Solas has almost certainly lied about the extent of the destruction he intends to inflict on the world to the apothecary and his other agents to secure their loyalty and services. He intends to betray them all just as he betrayed her! Lavellan remembers how Solas had grown uncomfortable when the apothecary had informed her that he was a good man. Maybe that is why he hides his name—he is ashamed, as he should be. Though Lavellan is angry for the apothecary and with Solas, she is still somewhat glad Solas has friends or something similar. He had claimed he would destroy himself to walk the path of death six years ago, but still some aspect of his personhood is intact.

Solas doesn’t answer her question. “To the matter of the apothecary: he is a mage. He spent much of his life locked in the Circle at the White Spire. He will not speak of what happened to him there—just that his situation was so dire that a kind templar resolved that she would break her oath and free him. The knight destroyed his phylactery and helped him escape the tower, never to return. For many decades now he has lived quietly treating the ailments of his neighbors and tending to his gardens. He came into my service some time ago, but he does little for me other than host the eluvian and pass along far-flung gossip he hears from travelers who stop to buy his pills and potions.”

Lavellan realizes what Solas is getting at. “You’re asking that I not have him arrested.”

Solas nods solemnly. “I will not allow him to be returned to a cage for the remainder of his years. He is far too old to flee from here. I will have the mirror moved to a location unknown to him and you will have no reason to disturb him. I promise you he cannot cause you trouble.”

The Inquisitor crosses her arms and frowns at her companion. “The Inquisition is going to have to monitor him. We’ll try to make it unobtrusive.” She thinks idly about what an agent stationed at the Crossroads might spend their days doing apart from staring at an old elf petting a bird. Keep tabs on smugglers on the trade routes? Maybe something out of the town Chantry? She’ll find a way to make a post worth it.

“Thank you,” Solas says, his relief at the favor granted clear in his voice. Solas pauses and for a moment closes his grey eyes. When he opens them again he looks incredibly tired. “It is kind of you to do this for me, and for him. Many in your position would not expend the resources for a watch when they could simply be done with a man by jailing him or sending him to the gallows. When we argued this morning, I lost my temper with you. I should not have said—“

“Solas, you lost your temper this morning because I was trying to upset you,” Lavellan quickly responds. “While not for those reasons, you were right about me not being a very good person.” Before Solas can interrupt to try to assure her otherwise, Lavellan adds, “I know, I know. It’s not that simple. But even if it was, I’ve made peace with it—I am a politician after all.” Lavellan is not sure what she had been trying to convey, but she feels strange for it. Solas robs her of all her good sense and in Lavellan’s mind the two of them have spent the morning oscillating uncontrollably between guarded disingenuousness and unbridled invitations to emotional intimacy. She has a magical artifact to find and she does not need to waste her time playing games.

As if he knows what she is thinking, Solas quietly suggests, “We should find our way to the Keep.”

“Come on. This town is bigger than I thought, let’s see if we can hire a carriage.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter wasn’t super eventful, sorry


	5. The Investigation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavellan and Solas join Dorian at Clattering Keep to investigate the scene of the crime. Dorian thinks that the elves are more focused on each other than they are on finding clues.

Lavellan stares out the window of the carriage, watching the number of birds roosting on each tree gradually increase as the driver hurries her horses nearer to Clattering Keep along an ill-used road branching north off of one of the thoroughfares out of the Crossroads. Perhaps they should have ridden, she thinks. Lavellan could focus more on horsemanship and less on the company with whom she keeps trading furtive glances. Despite her discomfort with sitting in silence with Solas, she has to wonder if she would be faring better or worse on her own horse. The motion of the carriage and her stillness on her seat is causing a pain to flare in her left elbow and shoulder. Lavellan catches herself growing light-headed with the swaying and shaking: this is a thing that happens often when she travels and it is possible that she would be feeling even worse if she were in charge of her own steed. Lavellan’s good energy from earlier is beginning to wane away through the slow and lurching ride.

Solas sits in silence across the car from Lavellan. Despite her resolution she finds herself watching him as he stares out over the yellowing landscape, leaning towards the rough pane of glass. From his profile she can see his eyes flicker about as he watches the hills roll by and though the sky grows increasingly clouded the day is still bright. Light pouring into the car through its window and catches in his eyes which glow like polished quartz or agate. Solas leans into the seat and his armrest and props his forearm on the cushion. He hides the dimple on his chin when he rests his face in his palm and his other arm rests across his stomach, his wrist curled somewhat delicately. His right leg is folded atop his left and at once Solas looks both guarded and relaxed. Lavellan finds herself for a moment wondering if he has gained weight or just lost muscle tone: there is something softer than she remembers about his form. As the carriage jolts her around the cushions she is sitting on feel hard and worn through.

“Are you surveilling me?” Solas asks of her without turning to face her. His voice skirts a strange line between boredom and curiosity. “I can’t think many crimes I could possibly commit while sitting here.”

“Is that the only reason people look at one another?” Lavellan responds with her own question. “If so, you must be very worried about what I might do in my sleep.”

“Oh. I did visit you in the Fade last night,” Solas admits sadly, “and I came very near to you. Too near to you. I apologize if I alarmed you.” Solas turns to look at Lavellan and the shared gaze makes her uncomfortable. The apology has not made her feel any better. He has appeared in her dreams innumerable times since he left her and from his expression she can tell he has deliberately limited his discussion to the one incident.

“I wasn’t alarmed,” Lavellan says. She remembers his bright red eyes in their dozens watching over her, the black mass of his fur ruffling in the ethereal wind. Again she is entrapped before him, trembling like a lost halla fawn falling over its own spindly legs. She can feel his breath and hear his monstrous heartbeat, loud and heavy and synced in time with her own until she blinks it away to focus on the man she sits with now.

“As soon as news of the Conflux reached me, I thought I might speak to you as soon as possible about the matter,” Solas explains. “So I came to you in your dreams. But when I looked upon your form in the Fade I was met with reservations—I decided I should instead come speak with you in person.”

Lavellan adjusts herself in her seat. Still at unease she ventures sharply, “I suppose it’s easier to menace me face to face.”

“I did not intend for it to come to that. I am sorry,” Solas says and even though he had never explicitly made a threat to her, much like his last apology this one does not make Lavellan feel any better. “I was more concerned about our venue’s affect on my own conduct. I am far too open and predisposed to act on impulse in the Fade. There are things better left unsaid.”

Though the explanation is not a good one, he is likely telling the truth. During the war they had messed around in the Fade only a handful of times and in each encounter the usually recalcitrant Solas had verged on playful aggression, both physically (to the extent the Fade was physical, she supposes) and in confessions of his feelings. In hindsight Lavellan can remember a number of times when he had likely nearly revealed to her his great secret before promptly and worriedly suggesting that the two of them wake up. She supposes that he must approach her as a wolf now because it is harder in that form to start spilling his stupid guts to her. Lavellan asks him, “Like what?”

Solas sighs with a small laugh and shakes his head. What a horrible tease he is!

“That’s awfully dissatisfying,” Lavellan replies as she irritably folds together her real arm with her prosthetic. She has always hated when he does this—telling her that there’s something that he knows and she doesn’t only to refuse to let her in on the secret. It reminds her of growing up among the Dalish and asking ‘why?’ about the great wide world, the humans, the Blight, her mother, the missionaries for Andraste, the Creators—about anything at all. That’s not for children, the elders would answer, and if you keep prying, Fen’Harel will come take you away.

The Dread Wolf himself buries his sad little smile in his palm as he turns again to the window. Lavellan grimaces in embarrassment and frustration when he glances back at her and, still smiling, says, “I know, da’len, I know.”

* * *

 

“You weren’t exaggerating when you told Josephine that there was a lot of blood,” Lavellan observes from the doorway of the laboratory. The large room’s walls loom in pale marble and the space is lit brightly by the clean glow of oil lamps that hang from the rafters on the high ceiling. Long and sturdy counters with smooth grey stone surfaces stretch out in the enclosure and the far end of the room feels almost jarringly sterile compared to the mess before her. No bodies remain in the laboratory but the scene is clearly that of a massacre. A massive table with the same grey stone of the counters stands in the middle of the room. The table and its contents—books, notes, and odd accoutrements of glass and metal—are splattered in blood. Glass shards and bits of paper rest in congealing and browning pools of the stuff at the table’s foot. Some of the broken containers on the floor had stored liquid solvents, and these contents join the blood on the floor and have served to make the smell in the room worse than that of the blood alone. In some places the meeting and mixture of the fluids has formed foam and bubbles along the outside of the grim puddles.

Dorian stands at a gaping hole in the outer wall of the laboratory and stares into the distance. He turns back when he hears the Inquisitor’s voice. The magister looks rough: his mustache is slightly askew and a pallor has drained the warmth from his olive skin. Through the hole behind Dorian, Lavellan watches dozens of grey birds circling in the grey sky. A couple of the jackdaws have entered through the aperture into the room and sit perched atop the wooden rafters. They clamor among themselves as they regard the beginning of the conversation below them.

If Dorian is surprised at the Inquisitor’s presence, he doesn’t act it. “Look right there,” he tells Lavellan, pointing at a series of streaks and partial footprints on the smooth and polished marble floor. He gives a laugh wrought with resignation and frustration. “I just about slipped and fell on it when it was fresh.”

“You’re all right?” she asks, trying to make her voice soft.

“Oh, right as rain! Or I might as well be,” Dorian responds. He leaves the hole to wander towards the center of the lab, looking over the mess. “I’m not sure if it’s been too long or not long enough since I was around for something like this. If nothing else can be said for the magisterium, we at least try to keep our assassinations nice and neat out of consideration for the cleaning staff.”

“From what I heard, you were the first one on the scene,” Lavellan says. Dorian doesn’t want her to coddle him. All business she continues, “Can you tell me what you saw?”

Dorian lets out a tired exhale before beginning. It seems like he has recounted his story many times that day already: “This morning, I didn’t join the others for research. After I spoke with you, I planned to return to the lab but remembered some neglected work I resolved to finish before the magisterium was back in session. Just write a letter to your bill’s cosponsor, I said to myself, it’ll take twenty minutes! Well it took more than an hour. When I finished I headed back to the lab to go back to helping with the artifact.” He pauses for a moment and takes a long breath. “I could tell something was strange as soon as I stepped into the hallway on this floor. There was this feeling of wrongness in the air and from the end of the hall I saw those doors—the ones you’re in right now—open, and I could hear this muffled…something. Not screaming, but I knew to begin running. That’s when I heard the explosion. I heard the second explosion outside just a few moments later, but I couldn’t think about it once I saw what was here. The bodies, of course, and all this smoke from the potions spilling and mixing, and the detonation. Through that I saw these masked people jumping through the hole in the wall on grappling hooks. The last of them was still in the room and as he went I hit him with a fright spell, and he fell forward through the hole. I rushed to try to follow them down, which is how I nearly fell. As soon as I got to the hole there was a terrible flash, and I couldn’t—”

Dorian shakes his head in disappointment. “Some of the guards chased the thieves and tried to shoot them with arrows while they were running at the second hole. But I didn’t see any of that because I had to sit here while all my vision was was green and my hearing was drowned out by the screams of ten thousand flying rats. By the time I had my senses back the thieves were gone,” he says. He stops and adds, “The guards counted six of them before they got served with flash grenades themselves.”

Lavellan asks, “The man you incapacitated is dead, correct?“

“Yes, so I’m afraid you can’t question him. He let go of his rope when the spell hit, fell three stories, and snapped his neck.” Almost testily, Dorian begins, “I’m sure someone’s looked at the body, but I’ve been trying to investigate other things and I—”

“—it’s not your job and not something you’re responsible for knowing,” Lavellan interrupts. “You did what you could.”

Dorian laughs a humorless laugh. “Oh, did I now? Maybe if I had been in the room when they attacked, I could have made a difference.”

“Everyone in this keep knows you’re a magister. The title alone is enough to make most not want to tangle with you. If they were watching our operations at all, it’s possible they were waiting to strike until you weren’t around.” Dorian looks unconvinced by this, sure of his own culpability. Lavellan has long considered Dorian her closest friend and is well aware there is little she can do when Dorian has resolved to seethe in self-loathing other than allowing him to have it out. “I don’t know. Maybe you were remiss. But by killing one of them, you did more than the entire security apparatus.”

“Well, that’s certainly a way to put it!” Dorian says with another tense and empty laugh. He starts to shake his head and seems to be winding himself tighter as he explains, “Serranus didn’t deserve to die in such a horrible way. He was a good man who never cared for power. Only for knowledge, and for sharing it. His books are at home on the nightstands of soporati shopkeepers as they are on the shelves of libraries of the great altus houses. And his lectures! Serranus would pick a topic—any topic!—and do tours of the cities filling auditoriums with people who wanted to learn.” Dorian gets a wistful look in his eye. “I have good memories surrounding those. Felix and I would skip out on doing research when he was around to have a listen. We would sneak wineskins in under our robes and make a whole day of it. I suppose I should tell Alexius about this. He and Serranus studied together in their youth. I’m sure hearing about the senseless murder of an old friend will brighten up Alexius’s indefinite house arrest considerably,” he adds with a sad sarcasm.

Dorian shakes his head again and looks at the horrible mess at his feet in the center of the room. He appears to be mentally cataloging a series of broken magical baubles and shattered alembics as he reflects maudlinly on the dead and the disgraced. He walks around the pools of gore and forces a long sigh. He neatens his mustache with his hand as he approaches Lavellan. At once his tone turns upward, levity forcibly injected into his conversation: “But you’re here! What a surprise. Today is just filled to the brim with unexpected things! At least this one is nice. I thought for sure you were speaking from Skyhold this morning. Well, I suppose I should just come to expect impossible things of you.”

“Circumstances aside, it’s nice to see you too, Dorian.” Standing in the arch of the door the Inquisitor opens her arms to usher Dorian into a friendly embrace. “We saw ourselves in through the hole in the wall. I really feel like that should be better guarded.”

Neither Dorian nor Lavellan is a touchy person and their hugs are always quick and somewhat awkward, a problem compounded by Lavellan’s prosthetic. The two take just a moment for the short greeting. “I didn’t want to say, but I was thinking that too,” he admits, choking his sadness and frustration down. He stands beside Lavellan half in the hallway. “I heard Harding talking about stashing it all in a basement or somewhere, but isn’t this place still full of—Hm,” the magister pauses as he at first takes note of the other party present. Until now, Solas has quietly stood just outside the frame of the door, out of view of the lab’s floor. Dorian’s dark eyebrows raise in bewilderment for a moment but he holds his shock back and continues his typical bluster almost in stride. “My,” he says calmly, “All these broken alembics! That’s not Solas I see standing there, is it?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Lavellan says flatly and she frankly expects Dorian to begin scolding her in the form of vicious teasing. The Inquisitor had introduced her companion as ‘an expert on the magic of the ancient elves’ when she announced herself on the premises to the Keep’s directing officers. As she had anticipated, none of Clattering Keep’s personnel were able to remember Solas from his time in the Inquisition or recognize him as its greatest nemesis. Lavellan had deliberately chosen not to think about how Dorian might react to seeing Solas at her side.

Solas bows his head slightly in greeting. “Dorian. The magisterium is treating you well, I hope.” His facial expression is ambivalent, but Solas’s well-wishing seems sincere: whatever he had convinced himself of later Solas had seen his old traveling companions as friends. Lavellan wants to believe that.

“Oh, good! That _is_ Solas. I thought I had gotten high on fumes,” Dorian replies. “I suppose you came through the eluvian network then.”

The elven mage takes the magister’s joke as an opportunity to walk past him through the wide doorway into the laboratory. Dorian makes a confounded face at Lavellan, who shrugs weakly before turning her attention to monitoring a rather inquisitive Solas in the lab. His quickly shifting gaze lingers for only a few moment on the bloody mess and instead he closely surveys the the extensive series of tools and measures lined in storage on the stone counters. Lavellan instinctively follows along behind him as he meanders along the wall up against which rests a spinning chalk board sporting a rudimentary diagram of the Conflux where everything is labeled with question marks. Solas takes hold of the edge of the chalk board and rolls it to tilt out away from the wall so he can get a better look at its backside, and in panic Lavellan realizes exactly what he has found.

“Don’t you dare look at that,” Lavellan warns, shoving the chalk board back into place and immediately putting her body between it and him. She crosses her arms and frowns at him, her back against the chalk board’s edge. She asks with a frustrated sigh, “Someone forgot to erase their work, didn’t they?”

“Yes.” Solas watches Lavellan’s expression and very quickly his face turns to a frown. “For what it is worth, I only saw it briefly and it was turned upside down.” Seeing she is unsatisfied with that, he adds, “I apologize that I let my curiosity get the best of me.”

“ _Sure_ ,” Lavellan says angrily because she is not certain what else she can really say.

The Inquisitor feels Dorian watching the confrontation and her cheeks burn as embarrassment springs up inside her. She is angry with the incompetence of those tasked with hiding Project Jackdaw from the Tevinters (they might not have seen it, a terrible little voice in her says, and at least most of them are now too dead to pass on secrets) but she is more horrendously ashamed of herself. Lavellan had invited her greatest enemy into a covert facility and _in front of someone else_ he had immediately been able to exploit an embarrassingly foolish oversight to gather information. She says nothing past the ‘ _sure_ ,’ but her mortification deepens as she imagines what Solas must think to see her face turn beet red under her green tattoos. Seemingly sensing the tension and discomfort, Dorian hums loudly.

“So. It’s been how many years since we last saw you?” Dorian asks as he conspicuously looks Solas over and peers disapprovingly at the strange embroidery and draped sleeves of his robe. Before Solas can answer, he continues, “You know, when I heard you were some sort of Elvish god, I had figured the whole ‘homeless apostate’ look had been an ingenuous disguise. Brilliant, I thought, we’d never expect anything nefarious from someone who couldn’t even manage to dress himself! But apparently I was mistaken and that’s just what you choose to look like. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a sad waste of fur trim.”

“Is there some problem with my overcoat?” Calmly Solas turns from Lavellan and the chalk board. The Inquisitor is relieved when Solas returns Dorian’s appraisal, impassively checking over the buckles and leather straps that hold together the separate pieces of the Tevinter’s well-tailored and fashionable surtout. The coat leaves one of Dorian’s shoulders bare above a detachable sleeve and its delicate and bright brocade contrasts appropriately with the hardware and with his shoes, which are styled after riding boots. In a familiar routine left behind years ago Solas continues, “If I cut out a panel and exposed my left nipple to all the world, would you find the garment to be in better taste?”

“Are you coming on to me at the site of a quadruple murder?” Dorian gasps and puts on an exaggerated face of fake disgust. Solas, despite otherwise remaining staid, rolls his eyes with slight amusement. “How gauche. You know, Solas, I don’t think I’ll ever understand why the Inquisitor grew so fond of you.”

If they’re all playing old games, Lavellan is willing to dig up tired jokes to prod at Solas: “Probably daddy issues.” She’s still somewhat irate that he’d called her da’len— _child_ —in the carriage and is happy to see Solas break his cool façade to give a huffing reaction to her jab.

Dorian lets out a laugh. “Of course! Ah, don’t we all have a few of those?” the Tevinter asks wistfully.

Solas shakes his head and closes his eyes with a long and frustrated sigh. “This is the site of a quadruple murder.”

Dorian laughs again and says, “All right, all right. Let’s get on with it, then. Why’s he here?”

“The artifact that your people extracted from the ruin is dangerous. It threatens both your world and mine and I will see it destroyed,” Solas quickly answers. His eyes are still closed, as if he is trying to focus on something beyond the situation right in front of him.

Dorian glances to Lavellan with an eyebrow raised and points at Solas to bidding Lavellan to explain herself, which she does somewhat poorly: “I don’t trust him, but I trust whoever took it even less. Oh. Do you know if the orb is still in its case?”

A dissatisfied Dorian answers, “So we have no way of knowing, but we think so. At least it didn’t break during the theft. I’ve been leading some of the investigation and the people reporting to me cleaned up some bits of flash grenades and lab equipment from in here and found some fragments of the bomb in from the outer wall in the field, but we haven’t seen any part of the case.”

Solas breathes a sigh of relief and quietly says, “This is good to hear.”

“So the case is important!” the other mage exclaims.

“Very,” Solas confirms with his eyes still shut.

“As usual, I was right!”

Lavellan asks, “What do you know about what happened here from before you arrived?”

“Just that Serranus and the others were killed horrifically. There were multiple assailants, from the amount of stab wounds. It went very quick,” Dorian responds. “They attacked a few minutes after a couple of the other research mages went downstairs to take a small scraping of the case to test with the alchemists in their lab downstairs.”

At long last, Solas opens his eyes. He turns immediately to Lavellan and says, “The Veil is thin from the violence, but I cannot tell if any spells were cast. The explosion at the outer wall involved a good deal of magic and its disruption of the Veil would drown out smaller irregularities.” It makes it feel like he really is still the same person that she knew from before. With Solas still looking upon her Lavellan realizes that half a nostalgic smile has bloomed across her face.

Lavellan’s expression switches to an almost unforced frown and she quickly turns to Dorian. “I heard the alchemists here were able to find lyrium sand. How about stealth powder?”

“The facility had the potions to test for explosives on hand, of course, but I had to ask the alchemists downstairs to prepare a flask of the stuff that lights up stealth powder residue. I’m hoping if it tests positive, we can find a residue trail leading back to where the powder was applied. It could tell us how the thieves got in. The security was incredibly tight here before three quarters of the soldiers went searching the countryside after the thieves.” Dorian abruptly says, “Even with the hole in the wall I could really use some air. It smells like death and insulation in here.”

The three head out into the hallway. The floors are draped with wine-purple runners and the paneling on the walls is set in a deep cherrywood. Outside of the lab the atmosphere in Clattering Keep is warm and comfortable and the rugs and tapestries seem to absorb some of the bird noises invading from outside. “Whose home is this?” Solas asks as he looks up to the hall’s illuminated ceiling where in bright and sumptuous fresco a long dragon sprawls in heaping coils down the vaulted arch.

“It’s no one’s home. It was built by a Tevinter emigre a few centuries ago, but right now the estate belongs to the Inquisition. No one had lived in it for years when I bought it—the property was owned by an Antivan bank. We’d been doing our very best to keep the whole place a secret from you,” Lavellan sighs.

“Under all the blood, the mages’ facilities seemed very nice. This would have been a good spot for a developmental laboratory.” There seems to be no taunting in his voice and that is almost worse than if he had gloated over some plan of hers being preemptively foiled. Solas reaches to the side to lay a hand upon the wood paneling, feeling the texture of the carved inlay before going to other details of the hallway, the rich ornamentation so different from the austere stonework of the lab. Solas takes in the frescoed ceilings appreciatively—he always did have an admiration for art and craftsmanship. Painting especially. Lavellan thinks of the brushes in her pocket and watches him from her periphery for a moment. Although he had pried through the lab he seems like he is not intent on causing trouble.

When she glances at Solas again Lavellan finds him looking at her with perhaps more scrutiny than he had for the décor. He slowly glances away before finding that this does not dispel her gaze. He frowns at her and she raises her eyebrows, an action that he mirrors. She will not avert her eyes from him—this is exactly where he’s going to commit some sort of crime. Now that he’s noticed her, he must be the first one to back down. She can’t tell if he’s deriving entertainment from her discomfort or not as he settles into their staring contest and something angry simmers inside her. Of course he is acting like this.

Lavellan finds herself hating how unbearably pretty she thinks Solas is. There is a slight and sweet effeminacy to him in even in his ragged look and affect and she has always found it irresistible. Despite wearing lumpy sweaters and third-hand robes dotted in patches and holes, he had managed to carry an extraordinary elegance in his mannerisms. As severe and intense as Solas can be he is in equal measure soft-spoken and genteel, like a cat of nine tails hidden in a bouquet. And his features—big soft eyes, high cheekbones, reddish eyelashes, pillowy lips. All these things peer over his fur collar at her and for a moment she forgets why exactly she is so set on staring back—only that she is set on it entirely. He seems so oblivious to his beauty.

Solas continues to fixate his stare on her wearing a frown half steeped in a frustration of his own and half-forlorn and Lavellan can’t even begin to think through what she would do to him if she allowed herself to lay her hands on him.

“What’s happening?” Dorian asks, glancing between the two elves he is unfortunate enough to accompany.

“I should not be here and the Inquisitor feels like it is her responsibility to supervise me,” Solas says in a matter-of-fact way.

Lavellan decides what she would do to Solas would probably be violent and she sighs heavily. To get away from Solas and the muddled feelings he evokes Lavellan drops back as the two mages begin to talk amongst themselves. She finds that a door in the hallway is unlocked. Lavellan turns the knob, pushes it open, and peers inside to occupy herself by studying the environment. The room she’s chosen is a janitorial closet of sorts for the lab, it seems—there is a large shelving unit piled with solvents labeled by use: “ _In Case of Fire_ ,” “ _Dissolves Black Muck_ ,” “ _Dissolves Green Muck_ ,” “ _Gets Rid of That Smell_.” The closet is spacious and plays host to a number of vials and even compounded lens devices. There is a small oil lamp on the wall and she turns its knob to start it and illuminate the room.

Dorian asks, “So what does the orb actually do? We never really got around to figuring that out.”

Solas launches into an extremely technical explanation to Dorian as Lavellan looks further into the room. A very large trunk sits in front of a pile of mops and Lavellan immediately flags it as strange—though old and worn, the trunk is beautiful teak and mahogany. It is not the sort of trunk that should be sitting unattended in a broom closet, Lavellan thinks. She nears the trunk to observe it. There is a latch for a padlock but the latch is scuffed and bent and the lock itself is absent. Someone has broken into it at some point. Lavellan crouches to take a better look at the designs on the hood of the trunk. She notices ivory accents in the wood. A small gold plate centered on the wooden trunk reads, “ _Property of Professor Evander Serranus_.”

“That’s not possible,” Dorian interrupts Solas’s arcane explanation.

“You would be right that it isn’t possible. Not within the limitations you are imposing upon possibility.”

Lavellan flips up the latch and begins to lift the lid with her good hand. It’s heavy, but she’s able to get her prosthetic into the gap and use both arms to flip the trunk open. Inside, there is a pile of red and grey garments.

“Oh, so we’re getting theoretical now, I see.” The magister stops. “Wait. No. Even in theory this makes no sense at all.”

Solas gives a disappointed hum. “Let me approach it from another direction then—“

She takes a coat in her good hand, lifting it to observe it. It is well-tailored and made of fine cloth, but very simple in design. She begins to pull the rest of the clothing from the trunk and realizes there is a number of full identical sets, including shoes.

“There you are,” Dorian says as he pops his head into the broom closet to look upon the pile of clothing and now emptied trunk. “You disappeared and I was worried! I thought that maybe the birds had gotten in and carried you off. What’s this?”

“I have no idea—I just found this here. I haven’t counted every item, but there are six coats inside.”

“Like the six attackers the guards confirmed,” Dorian says. He gives a small jump in surprise: “Ah-ha! These look like Serranus’s servingmen’s garb. The red and grey are the colors of his house’s heraldry.”

“The trunk belongs to him, too,” Lavellan informs Dorian as Solas crouches at her side while looking at the bottom floor of the trunk. He reaches in to stick his fingers in some sort of dusty sediment that Lavellan had not observed before on the bottom, which he observes carefully.

“What are you doing?” Lavellan asks Solas. He seems to be levitating a small amount of dust from the bottom, and the telltale green-blue ripple of a magical barrier flares up around the particulate matter.

“Taking precaution in case this is not what I believe it to be,” Solas says as he stands, the dust and the barrier still levitated in front of him. “I would prefer to be prepared if it happened to be even a small amount of gaatlock or lyrium sand.”

At once a conjured spark sets the powder ablaze. A bright green light that leaves spots in Lavellan’s vision ripples through the substance for a mere instant before it flairs out, the barrier dissipating with the flames. The light is almost the color of veilfire, but brighter and with a shallow opacity.

“Ah! I assumed correctly. This was the color of the flash, correct, Dorian?” Solas asks, sounding somewhat pleased with himself.

“Yes! Of course! I know this alchemical compound.” Dorian says as something clicks in Lavellan’s mind. She’s seen this touring the halls of other facilities and workshops, piles of powders and rocks carefully organized on tables next to flasks of acid, lye, and saltpeter, handled cautiously by scorched academics in lead-lined gloves and haphazardly by three-fingered dwarves. “Don’t tell me what it is, Solas. I’ll come to it. It’s been so long since I had to use anything from my natural philosophy courses, but the name is right on the tip of my—“

“It’s baryta,” Lavellan finally finds the name for what she’s looking for, cutting off Dorian’s lament. “Baryta burns green. People treat it and mix it with other metals, and then it can be used in all sorts of alchemical explosives like fireworks and flash-bangs.”

“Well, you weren’t supposed to tell me either,” Dorian reproaches Lavellan bitterly. “But what a discovery! The flash grenades were stored in here, then.”

“Unless someone else is carrying around baryta,” Solas says.

“So does this mean that Serranus’s servingmen had something to do with the attack?” Dorian asks. “Serranus arrived with four servingmen for him and his assistants, and I’ve seen them all since the artifact was stolen. I know he’s supposed to have had more back at the site—“

“How many servants does one man need to take on a dig?” Lavellan interrupts.

“Archeology is serious business in the Imperium! You can’t just do it in discomfort, you need to be on the top of your game!” Dorian explains. He pauses and returns to his prior train of thought: “Maybe some of his students were in on it? The attack only killed one of those. Or it could be the students and the servingmen! Perhaps at the beginning they planned to betray the mission and steal the Chantry artifacts to sell on the black market, and that’s why they had the explosives, but they decided the Elvish orb was worth more. They could have let the thieves in, and held grenades and maybe weapons for them in the Professor’s things. But where are his things? What if Serranus himself—no, he would never—“ Dorian trails off in thought.

Lavellan turns her attention from the postulating Dorian to the calm and quiet Solas. When he sees she is looking to him, Solas says, “I am impressed with your knowledge, Inquisitor. Of late you’ve taken to learning about explosives?”

“I don’t sleep very well. I have to read about something,” Lavellan says dourly. If he’s not going to say it directly, neither will she. “I guess I also go to lectures at the University of Orlais when I’m in town and able to.” She doesn’t really get all of it. One day when she has time she wants to recieve an entire formal education. It seems like a distant dream.

Solas continues, “I find it admirable that you take such interest in the work of your researchers. No one outside Qunadar has ever produced gaatlock—until you happened upon the formula and your people were able to replicate it. From what I saw in the laboratory, your new ventures are much more ambitious. To attempt to reproduce the properties of gaatlock without employing dragon venom is unheard of, and the implications of a success would certainly be fascinating. Right now my interest in your studies is purely academic and I would like to see them continue unimpeded, so if you wish to use these facilities for further research on the matter, I would not interfere with the endeavors.”

“You can quit mocking me, Solas,” Lavellan groans. She knows that he has long since infiltrated the Inquisition’s weapon development programs—even if he had been unaware of the use of this particular facility until he saw the formulae on the chalk board, he knew this was happening somewhere. Project Jackdaw has been going on for years and it is highly unlikely that Solas does not know of its existence and purpose. He knows she knows that he has known and he must be rubbing it in.

“I’m not trying to mock you!” Solas quickly tries to reassure her, “Regardless of our circumstances I genuinely do hold you in high esteem.”

Dorian makes a loud gagging noise. “I can’t stomach this any longer. I know there’s a mystery to solve, but I guess it can wait while the two of you get a room.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve decided this is going to be about thirty chapters, but that’s subject to change because the pacing is getting a little hard to really keep under control.


	6. The Jackdaws

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavellan continues to act erratically and Solas kills some birds.

The dead man’s large green eyes are open and he stares blankly and glassily up at the ceiling. The tips of his pointed ears touch the grey stone of the slab beneath him.

He’s an elf. Lavellan glances at Solas, who hangs back from the conversation in the middle of the room along the wall. Out of the corner of her eye she spots him looking beneath the sheets on one of the other slabs playing host to one of the morning’s casualties. He turns away slowly and shakes his head, seeming at once sorrowful and detached.

There is a full morgue in Clattering Keep—that had been well-advertised by the bank agent that sold it to the Inquisition. Lavellan was told by the agent that the Tevinter who had built the home had been a researcher of spirit healing and medicinal magic, but the distressed corpse seems to fit the basement a little too well. Stringy strands of the dead elf’s mousy hair are stuck to his forehead and his skin is pale and at once waxy and chalky, the sickly color of his lips near indistinguishable from the rest of his face. Something about him seems unnatural. Lavellan hopes the corpse isn’t carrying any sort of disease.

Two Inquisition guards stand across the slab from the Inquisitor and Dorian. One of the guards is a Vashoth woman and the other is a human man. Both earned their positions at Clattering Keep for exemplary service—exemplary service that they had apparently not displayed that morning.

“If no one has apologized, Your Worship, let me be the first: I deeply regret that the day of your visit has been marred by such a tragedy,” the man says. Lavellan has grown used to it, but she hates being called ‘Your Worship.’ Leliana gets ‘Your Perfection’ and Lavellan likes that one much better.

The great grey woman bows her head. “We’re not worthy of the honor of your visit.”

Though Lavellan knows they are not mocking her, she feels like they might be mocking her. She is short-tempered and quarrelsome woman in some regards but from the beginning of her tenure as Inquisitor Lavellan has refused to lose composure before her soldiers or the public. She closes her eyes for a moment and brings back memories of her Keeper catching her stealing acorn bread left at shrines as offerings to the Creators. She emulates the disappointed old woman by wringing all the anger from her voice before asking calmly, “Do you recognize this man? Yes or no.”

“Yes, Your Worship,” they say.

“Did you give him admission into Clattering Keep?”

“Yes, Your Worship.”

She keeps affect out of her voice: “When?”

“This morning, Your Worship,” the woman says.

The man adds, “Around eight.”

“You let in him and how many others?”

“Five, Your Worship,” says the woman.

Lavellan ventures, “But when Dorian and your superior officers asked you this morning, you said no one unusual or unscheduled had entered the Keep.”

The man says, “Your Worship, that’s right. This man and his cohort were scheduled to be here. A few days ago shortly after he arrived the Professor said more of his servingmen would be on their way as soon as they got finished cataloging items at the Chantry excavation. They had to provide us with papers and give us a password to get in to prove they were from the site: they had those.”

“Dorian, do you think it’s possible that Serranus’s servingmen went rogue?” Lavellan asks. “Well, went rogue after they got infiltration, combat, and siege training.”

“I’d like to check when these particular ones came into his employ.” Dorian strokes his mustache in thought as he looks over the man that he killed. “The news of the Chantry excavation caused a stir in Tevinter high society—I could certainly see someone hiring people to act as plants to sabotage the dig and make off with the relics from the excavation. They probably used fake names, but any records on them the household has could give us a lead!”

“It’s just amazing how many explosives they had at the ready. I guess we don’t know what their plan was. Maybe the strange bandits Harding told us about were part of the plot too?” She doesn’t like that explanation. Lavellan turns back to the guards. “Do you remember anything about the rest of the party?”

The horned woman says, “They were unremarkable. Well, all the slaves looked sick but I figured they’d caught ill on the—“

“—Wait just one moment,” Dorian interrupts. Almost forcefully he asks, “Who said they were slaves? Did they tell you that? Or are you just assuming they were slaves because the Professor’s a Tevinter?”

Solas, who has been hanging back, gives an indignant huff from his spot along the wall. “Don’t tell me you are upset by your homeland’s reputation as a nation of slavers.”

Dorian gives a laugh of disbelief. “Why on earth would I be offended? I know you apparently have a _thing_ about it, but there’s nothing wrong with owning slaves. I own slaves! But, no, listen—I have a reason for asking,” the magister insists. He turns back to the guards waiting at attention and repeats himself slowly, “Did they say they were Serranus’s slaves?”

The guards look to Lavellan and she nods for them to answer.

“Yes, ser—Magister, ser,” says the man. “They introduced themselves as such.”

“Oh! Well then.” Dorian clears his throat. “The people who came in here can’t be Serranus’s slaves, and that’s because he doesn’t keep any! Serranus was an abolitionist. In the Imperium abolitionism is seen as a weird fringe stance, but it’s certainly one he held. Some years ago, he made a big public deal about releasing every slave in his household and since then he’s only ever hired free servingmen!” The magister explains, “Anyone claiming to be Serranus’s slave is lying, and moreover they can’t possibly be familiar with Serranus at all! The thieves must have stolen a trunk and his servingmen’s uniforms, and found the password...somehow! Those people were never in his employ, even under false pretenses.”

“Wonderful. So our plans to try and find records on their employment is a no-go, and we’re no closer to an actual explanation,” Lavellan sighs, “or finding out where they might have went.”

The guardsman timidly raises a hand, “Your Worship, if I may.”

“You may, soldier,” Lavellan allows.

“You asked if there was anything else we remembered about the party, Your Worship. Other than what my partner mentioned, they were unremarkable. I don’t know if this is relevant, and I don’t want to offend anyone, but considering the ongoing conflicts the Inquisition faces it may bear mentioning, Your Worship. The entire group had something in common,” he says. The guard takes a long pause and Lavellan knows what he is going to say before he says it: “They were all elves.”

* * *

  
Dorian, Solas, and Lavellan emerge through a trapdoor on the floor of the watchpoint pavilion atop the highest tower of Clattering Keep and immediately the air is filled with the cackling of jackdaws. Looking out over the land Lavellan watches innumerable birds stir. They are perched in legion on all the lower roofs and steeples of the castle, along its ramparts, and amongst the trees and rocky outcroppings rising from the desolate hills.

“So what does it mean that the thieves are all elves?” Dorian asks as he offers a hand to Lavellan to help her up—a hand that she ignores. As she pulls herself onto the platform she straightens herself out and watches the magister’s attention become suspicious as it turns on to Solas.

Solas seems to gauge the intent of Dorian’s pointed gaze and he frowns. “So now you suspect me? Why would I come here now if I were involved with the robbery in any way?”

“I don’t know,” Lavellan responds for Dorian. The jackdaws chatter around the tower, and she has to raise her voice slightly to be heard over them. “To gloat?”

Solas lets out a disgusted sigh. “So you do think I am responsible.”

“If we did, would you blame us? You gave us our last five elf-related debacles,” answers Lavellan with incipience steeping in her voice. She thinks it is unlikely that Solas orchestrated the heist but she is disturbed by the fact that all the thieves are elves. The dangerous artifact is already of Elvish origin. If the incident goes public in any way it will paint elves as violent, cunning, and eager to play with dangerous magics. It’s precisely what the most wretched people in Thedas need right now. Already it is hard to pursue Inquisition policy that does not target and disenfranchise her people. She has fought hard against having elves categorically barred from certain posts and missions because of the risk they work for Solas, instead opting to expend the resources for individual scrutiny. Lords who fear the mysterious Fen’Harel have purged elves from their employ and tightened their watches on alienages. It had gotten better for elves for a while. Lavellan had really thought so.

From his aspect Solas seems not to share Lavellan’s worries, and why would he? He does not have to live as an elf in society and the continued oppression of the People drives elves to join his ranks. Besides, he hardly thinks of himself as elven—he believes he’s better because he’s  _elvhen_. (Lavellan, perhaps wrongly and purely out of spite, refuses to believe there is any difference between the two categories apart from the former being subjected to generations of malnutrition.) More incensed by the accusations leveled at him than the potential dangers the situation could pose for elves, Solas asks, “So we are ignoring six months ago when that multilateral nonaggression treaty was ruined when the Crows’ business ledgers were made public by the assassins who turned Viddathari?”

Lavellan rolls her eyes. She’s back in the mood to argue with him: “Some of the assassins were elves, yes, but that was a Qunari-related debacle.”

“Not mutually exclusive. I also was in no way affiliated with the Halamshiral Poisoner. For a lone madman he tallied a rather impressive body count among petty nobles before he was caught this summer. He was an elf.”

“You’re really denying involvement in that?”

Solas crosses his arms and shakes his head. “I most certainly am denying affiliation with a serial murderer. But what of your own mishaps? I think those debacles could be accurately be described as ‘elf-related.’”

“What mishaps?” Lavellan does not like the insinuation that she has mishaps. She has done well in her role for a reason and that is that under her bravado she is a careful and exacting woman. She has made sure to operate in such a way that even when her enemies try to deal her out of the game she still holds cards in her hand and is able to play. Today is an awful exception and her memories of her own reckless and dangerous behavior in her youth revisit her. She had felt so helpless and directionless then, but now—

Solas gives a hum of disapproval that serves to start the elves at the sport of shooting bitter remarks back and forth: “I somehow doubt that you wanted to cause a succession crisis in the Anderfels. Hossberg was placed under martial rule for three weeks!”

“Fine, so I didn’t know that opening an investigation into that Margrave would set off a chain of events. But I handled it. Even the arson in the municipal buildings. Even the part with the tooth smuggling ring! And even by my standards that was _weird_. And for what it’s worth, the Margrave  _was_ embezzling gold that belonged to the Chantry just like we thought. It worked out in my favor.”

“How does that disqualify it from consideration? The five incidents I assume you were referring to worked out very nicely in _my_ favor.”

“Yes, but you’re evil.”

“Evil? I object to the descriptor. You know how facile I find the concept, and while my ends are at odds with yours—ah. You are trying to get a rise out of me.”

“If you say so.”

“Don’t be dismissive.”

“Don’t be a pedant!”

Dorian passes the time as the two bicker by tossing balls of flame and arcane fright at the circling jackdaws.

“Are you trying to kill them?” Lavellan asks him abruptly as she turns her attention from Solas mid-snide-remark to look out over the aerial spat. There must be scores of them nesting around the watchtower alone—she is beginning to see why people think the place is haunted. The platform they stand on is the highest on the building, peeking just slightly over the roof of the highest tower. There are two layers to the roof with different angles of slopes and the perimeter of the tower below the watchpoint is punctuated by windowed gables. The corners formed by the gables between both roof slopes are stuffed with the nests of jackdaws and the birds weave in and out to get to their scraggly homes.

“No, just trying to shoo them off. If the two of you are done finalizing your divorce, we did come up here for a reason. I wanted to show you the land routes the thieves probably used to escape—but it’s hard to see the trails from here with all of these flying rats flapping in our faces.” Despite his complaints and his magical rebuffs, a large number of the birds continue to tumble through the air even inside the posts of the watchpoint where the three stand. A swell of jackdaws along the roof takes off and pulls some of their number from below, for a moment blotting out the sky before they disperse.

Lavellan leans on the edge of the watchtower’s guardrail as Dorian begins to explain to her and Solas the probable routes that the thieves took away from the Keep out of the hole in the wall. As he points out to easy paths through the hills visible from above, Lavellan looks up to see that the rafters of the pavilion roof on the watchpoint are filled with jackdaws and their nests. The ambient chattering of the birds begins to drown out Dorian’s exposition even after her eyes return to following his finger.

Dorian walks around to the other side of the watchtower to explore an option at the other side of the castle. “There certainly was a party waiting outside the walls to set off the big explosion, and the only way they could have approached the castle without being seen by the guards at the ramparts is by traveling under that tree cover over there…” Lavellan follows him as he explains. None of this was Dorian’s responsibility, but he had coordinated almost the entire investigation of the Keep in the aftermath of the robbery. Lavellan is grateful. At the same time she had come out here to learn and do things, and she feels like she hasn’t learned or done enough and frustration seeps into her body with the ache in her left shoulder and upper arm. She shakes the limb to chase away the creeping pain and for the most part it works.

Though the sky is grey, sun comes in through the gaps in the clouds. As she tries to stretch to relax her muscles something catches her eye. From above at the watchpoint, Lavellan can see a bright glint sparkling in a nest jammed between the roof and the stone siding of a gable corner far down the roof of the tower. She remembers Maude’s basket at the apothecary’s overflowing with lost buttons, bent silverware, and bright shards of glass and soon finds herself calculating how far down the fall is from the guardrail of the watchpoint and the higher, steeper roof of the tower. There’s hardly any wind. That’s good.

She decides that she probably won’t need two hands or any special equipment to do what she’s going to do.

Dorian and Solas have their back turned to her as Dorian explains how difficult the series of ridges to the south are to go down, and how it made it more likely that the thieves headed north or west to leave the castle. Only about six feet of a drop to the first roof, she thinks. The shingling is rough on the higher roof—she can slow her fall with friction and will not need two hands to stop her from simply tumbling over the edge and falling to her death. Compelled by her old death drive, Lavellan doesn’t give the mages notice as she climbs over the guardrail, carefully dismounts to the ledge on the other side, and hangs on to the bottom of the railing with her one good hand to she gingerly lowers herself as far as she can down to the roof below.

Lavellan lets herself fall a foot or two onto the slope of the roof and prepares herself for the impact so she will not bounce and begin to tumble or roll down. Though she is out of shape and it’s been some time since Sera took her roof-hopping, she remembers tips and lessons from the blonde prankster and knows generally how to manipulate her body so that it will only move in ways she wants it to. She lands sprawled to absorb the energy of the fall. When she hits the roof, birds rise in panic and she begins to slide down in the position she had intended, her arms and legs scraping along the surface. Her assumptions about the how the shingling will affect her fall speed prove accurate and by the time she reaches the end of the roof she has stopped falling and must crawl with her legs in front of her to the edge. The second roof just five feet below will provide her a walkway about six feet wide, and not very steeply sloped—traversing that will be easy from here, she thinks.

It is not until she rests her feet on the second, slight slope that she begins to truly think about the jackdaws. There are scores of them at the tower alone and they careen near to her as they swoop and rise again. Watching them she begins to feel faint and she remembers the pain that has been aching in the remnants of her left arm since the carriage ride, which seems to have bloomed anew with the impact of her jump from the watchpoint. She is twelve stories from the in the high tower ground—a fall from here will kill her. She remembers that earlier in the day, she had refused to jump unaided between two rocks hanging over a stream not fifteen feet below her. She tries not to look down but for a mere moment she does and the world swirls beneath her. The spinning is sped by the grey birds tumbling forth from their homes along the roof and in holes in the masonry.

“Oh, Maker. There she is,” she hears Dorian say somewhere above her about when she has made it to the first gable. He yells down to her over the flapping and screeching, “Is this really a thing you’ve decided to do?”

“Yes! I think I found something!” Lavellan calls back. Different little packs of jackdaws alight and touch down alternately, the undulating flock in the sky swimming with their commotion. She steadies herself by leaning into the gable, which takes up the space of walkable roof and hangs on tight to the stones with her real hand as she presses to it while she passes it. Once she is past the gable she again has over six feet of roof as space to walk on and she hurries along. Several birds sitting on the roof in her path alight and each time one takes off she feels as if it might carry her up and away over the edge with its motion.

“What in the world are you doing?” Solas calls. Lavellan thinks she must be imposing the incredulous fury with her onto his voice with her imagination because it begins to well up within her as well. Now that everyone’s looking at her this seems horrendously dumb. “Inquisitor, you must—“

“—I said I found something!” she shouts back quickly and harshly to cut him off. This was a bad idea, she knows. Light-headed Lavellan steadies herself. She feels the blood pumping in her veins as she leans on the roof. “I’m fine, I can go in through one of the windows to get down,” she yells to the mages. She thinks she should have gone down and out through one of the windows to get up, but that didn’t have the excitement of throwing herself onto the roof, now did it? Angry with herself, Lavellan continues on, carefully scaling around the second gable, careful not to allow the motions of the birds to unbalance her. Once she crosses, more beady eyes greet her. Had there been this many when she looked down at the nest from the watchpoint? Or had they blended in to the grey of the roof?

She looks through the crowd of birds to the nests and sees again the bright flash. Behind and above her watchers on the roof is thick with the birds and she pauses as a flurry of them again go past her before diving down along the side of the tower and she loses her balance. Before she can flop down the slope to her death she swings to fall upward onto the wall between the roofs. The jackdaws hovering and circling seem to watch her as she fixes in on the nest that had drawn her attention from her perch on the watchpoint.

She wrenches herself from the wall and carries on, only to pull herself back a few steps as she sees an incoming bird in her periphery. It swoops back up in the sky and Lavellan fears the rush was deliberate and now the whole flock on the high tower will attack her for approaching the conglomeration of nests. She feels a wing hit her back and she sways forward again and she clasps herself to the wall and roof, the angle of her feet uncomfortable. The air is turbulent from the flapping of hundreds of wings. Her vision swims as she peers out behind her into the open sky where the jackdaws circling and looping around the tower like a shrieking swarm of flies. What has she done? She won’t panic, she won’t panic. She can edge back towards the second gable and kick the window in there if she really has to she thinks, she just needs to pull herself together and back. But she’s already here, and she can get to the nest—another bird glances her as it takes off. How many more will there be? The birds are more numerous towards her destination and she thinks it may be easier to crawl with her prosthetic shielding her face.

Past her a whole diving hoard swoops to trace the side of the building on its descent. Dozens of flapping wings batter her as she squeezes herself on her knees into the wall beneath the protective overhang of the top roof. Lavellan winces to better guard herself and in a moment the shrieking falls silent and the air stills. When she looks back up, the jackdaws have stopped moving. They do not fall to the ground but hang inert in the air as if they are part of some slow-moving mobile dangling from above on wire, held still in mid-process of their motion like fish in solid ice. Lavellan pulls herself from the wall and straightens herself up in bewilderment amidst the frozen scene. Slowly regarding the strange world around her, she steadies herself and turns to the tower.

Solas stands at the railing with one hand up at shoulder height. She is far enough that she cannot read his facial expression but she can see a sustaining silver-purple glow in his eyes wane away as he drops his eyelids. “Go finish your intended task,” Solas says. He no longer is shouting: he projects his voice but his meter is firm and calm. “And then get off the roof. Please.”

“We can catch you if you fall,” a still-frazzled Dorian yells, “but there are a lot of better ways that you could have gone about whatever this is! I won’t allow any more deaths here today!” A pang of guilt rises in Lavellan’s chest and she hurries to finish her mission. She’s not sure what’s in the gabled room or where inside the building it lets out, but her shoulder is starting to ache and she’s kicking in the window to get inside so she can leave the roof as soon as possible.

The Inquisitor walks the last few feet of roofing to the large piles of nests stuck in the corner by the gable. For a moment she fears she may have been hallucinating the sparkle, but with another passing ray of sun she spots her quarry amidst the piled sticks and dried heather.

Lavellan goes to her knees by the nest and moves aside a couple of still birds (they are warm and unmoving and she tries to hold on to each animal as briefly as possible) to get to the nest. She moves aside the twigs and brush to see its trove. She sticks her prosthesis under what she has moved aside to hold it up so she can go through the nest with her good hand—while she can see what she wants from the outside, it is far in the back. Careful not to disturb the eggs, Lavellan rifles through metal pieces and bits of jewelry to carefully remove what she risked her life for from the nest before gingerly turning on her heel and raising herself to a standing position.

Lavellan waves to make sure she has the attention her companions atop the watchpoint—as if they would be focused anywhere else. She holds her prize above her head as sunlight pours down through a gap in the clouds above. “Look!” Lavellan yells. Solas obeys by opening his still glowing eyes. In the Inquisitor’s hand are two large glass shards, gleaming brightly with the strange undulation that exudes from all materials imbued by the fabric of the Fade. Each piece boasts broken fragments of delicate gold framing embedded in the pane like the spindly roots of grass taking purchase in the earth.

“What is that? You’re a little far out, and a bird’s in the way.” Dorian moves to the side and leans forward over the railing a little. “Oh. That’s not—“ his voice drops away to inaudibility when he realizes.

“The thieves _did_ break the case!” Lavellan shouts. Like the apothecary said, stealing sparkling things is in a jackdaw’s nature. The rest of the case is probably in other nests around the castle, she thinks, having been snatched up by the compulsive collectors. “The jackdaws carried away all the pieces!”  
  
Lavellan watches up from below as Solas buries his face in his hands. He turns away from the railing and walks back, leaving Dorian alone to stare down in discomfort over the edge. At that moment something that is at once heavy and immaterial surges into the air with some sort of horrible twitch. There is a crunching and snapping of avian bones and the stilled jackdaws in the sky above Lavellan and at her feet simultaneously release from their hold. The birds slump dead and fall at once in flopping heaps to the roof and down to the ground below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tfw you get some bad news so you accidentally smush all the birds in your magic thrall


	7. The Forgotten Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas leaves Lavellan alone in his home as he goes to handle private business, and memories of a visitor to a long forgotten court come to keep her company.
> 
> Upon Solas’s return, it becomes clear to Lavellan that his mental state is perhaps as frayed as her own.

Lavellan stands alone on a balcony high above the sea. Her dark hair and the unbuttoned collar of her blouse pull in the wind as she leans back against a brightly mosaicked wall while watching the waves. From where it crashes on the white chalk cliffs down the coast the cobalt-colored water seems to sprawl out in its heaving waves into eternity. The sky is grey and the air is turbulent, and though it is autumn the air is warm. Lavellan figures there are worse places to have been abandoned by Solas: for instance, she supposes he could have taken her back to Skyhold. His quiet was a grim one upon his surprise parting from her and she can tell that the breaking of the glass case has deeply disturbed him. That doesn’t _excuse_ him.

Lavellan is exhausted and begins to feel ill, but her duties keep her busy. She holds her sending crystal in the ungloved palm of her good hand and, more hesitantly than she had jumped onto an unguarded roof chasing glints in her periphery, taps a pattern onto the stone with her thumb to activate her crystal’s connection with the gem Ambassador Montilyet keeps in her desk drawer.

Josephine’s voice immediately rings out from the crystal. “Inquisitor!” the Ambassador exclaims with relief heavy in her voice. “Are you still out on your walk? The Commander and I were beginning to worry for you.” Lavellan feels somewhat guilty: she’s jerked around her advisors enough over her tenancy in office and should at least take to doing so with better etiquette.

“Josephine, could you, uhm, get Cullen please?” asks Lavellan. She realizes she sounds like she is about to announce some sort of tragedy. Quickly in reassurance she adds, “Don’t worry, I haven’t had an accident or anything. I just have some…developments to share with you.”

“Oh? Of course. Just one moment,” a quizzical Josephine agrees. “He’s working with the maps in the War Room, thank goodness, so I won’t have to send anyone up the ramparts and wait while they fetch him.” She hears the tap of Josephine setting the sending crystal on her desk and her voice grows distant as she hears the knock at a door. “Commander? My apologies for interrupting. The Inquisitor has news for us.”

“Lavellan’s back?” The Commander’s voice is barely audible, but the concerned irritation in his tone is evident even at low volumes. “Thank the Maker. She’s been gone all day.”

“No, she’s just sending her voice. But she says there have been developments?”

“Developments? While she was away down the mountain?”

Lavellan waits impatiently for the advisors to rejoin her. Listening to their muffled and confused chatting stokes her anxiety over confessing the day’s sins to her steadfast, rule-abiding associates. She girds herself as she hears footfalls and shuffling.

“Inquisitor,” the now clear voice of Cullen greets as a door closes in the backdrop. “Where are you? We were beginning to think of sending a search party out.”

“With everything happening, we were somewhat worried for you,” admits Josephine as she comes closer to her gem. “Oh, but I’ve said that.”

The Inquisitor grimaces to herself in embarrassment. Had she concerned them that much? “Sorry, I know I’ve been out of contact for way too long. I, uh, I just had a run in with an old friend.”

Josephine’s inflection indicates that she is beginning to suspect that something strange has occurred: “You...came upon someone you knew on the mountain?”

“So actually it was in my bedroom, but—hm. You’re both in the Ambassador’s office, right?” Lavellan interrupts her own train of thought. After their confirmation and a moment of quiet contemplation she suggests, “So those new chairs are there! I love them. Very comfortable. All right, so maybe you’ll both want to sit down for this.”

* * *

All things considered, the Inquisitor thinks that her explanation went over well. This is mostly because neither the Ambassador nor the Commander had been able to return a better answer to ‘What was I supposed to do when an extremely powerful mage showed up in my bedroom and told me he was going to take what he wanted by any means?’ than ‘Play along, don’t let him kill you, and see if you can get something out of it.’ She walks them through the entire morning, from her bedroom to the investigation of the Keep to the part where Solas allegedly on accident crushed the bones of countless birds, to the part where he took her to a strange house on the seaside, told her he needed to attend to some matters she could not be present for, stepped back through the mirror, and closed the pathway behind him before she could follow. Lavellan neglects to tell her advisors that she shrieked at the inert mirror in rage at both herself and Solas after his retreat—now she must wait and she is angry and horribly anxious. The snide son of a bitch must feel so clever about trapping her there.

“Dorian seems convinced it’s a plot by Tevinter art thieves. I’m not so sold, but along with running the search for the artifact, we need to re-vet everyone at Clattering Keep and on the dig to see if anyone could have been hired out to help the thieves,” Lavellan says to finish her explanation. Her fatigued mind races and she must explore every possible path of action to make her imprisonment bearable. She feels like she is forgetting things still. Her mind is a muddled mess and must expend energy to fight lethargy. “I also want to get a tracking party to find the bandits that were in the mountains. From what I understand, they haven’t attacked the site since the artifact was removed from the temple—I find that suspicious.”

“Understood, Inquisitor,” Cullen says. “I’ll pass the request for vetting along to Charter in Val Royeaux.”

“What a tragedy. All that life lost…” in the distortion of the crystal, Josephine’s voice sounds very sad. “Referring to the people, of course, and not to the birds. Though I suppose that is sad too.”

Lavellan continues, “Dorian is essentially running the investigation at the facility, and as a favor. I think we should arrange for him to be sent some sort of ‘thank you’ gift. We can follow protocol for our own dead, but Josephine, can you find what sort of tribute is proper to give at Tevinter funerals? We also have to worry about how it looks that one of the most beloved public intellectuals in the Imperium died while working with us…we should maybe look into giving some sort of grant to a university or library in Tevinter in the Professor’s name?”

“Yes, I agree—though funding a Tevinter institution may not be looked upon favorably especially in Fereldan and Orlais.”

“For good reason,” Cullen adds. “For all we know, the magisters will somehow take the the gold and put it to blood magic.”

“We will have to choose the beneficiary carefully. I have friends I can ask for guidance,” Josephine says. She hums in further thought and continues, “As for Dorian…We could get him a case of fine wine? Oh Tevinters are always so hard to choose bottles for, though…Hmm.”

“Dorian isn’t picky,” Lavellan assures her. “Though he might prefer something a little stronger than wine.” Despite his wealth and status Dorian will happily slurp down any rotgut liquor placed before him—in their twenties she and Dorian must have drowned their vast frustrations in the cheapest and vilest swill they could find together a thousand times. Their chosen liquor was often so foul that even Rainier and Sera, neither a stranger to budget intoxicants, wouldn’t come near. _There is an enviable passion and a tenacious hope to your disaffection. Sometimes I miss being young and miserable myself,_ Solas had once wistfully lamented after accepting a swig from a bottle she and Dorian were passing back and forth, _but then I remember that comes with a compulsion to self-flagellate by drinking turpentine._  Lavellan hurries herself on from thinking about Solas. “Wait. Nothing’s happened to Kenric? He left before the attack and I didn’t hear anything about him at Clattering Keep. No one’s turned up a corpse that happens to be his?”

“As far as we know, Professor Kenric is en route to Orlais undeterred,” answers Cullen. “But since we’re speaking of turning up corpses, I have developments to report as well. Less than an hour ago Lieutenant Harding contacted us with her sending crystal to tell us that her party found a retinue of fifteen men dead in a ditch not far from Clattering Keep. They were recognized as Tevinter guards and servingmen from the dig site who were heading to join the Professor at Clattering Keep. Six were stripped to their smallclothes—which corroborates your findings. The killers dumped a number of the Professor’s belongings along with the bodies, and there were signs that...advanced interrogation methods...had been employed on the victims. I assume that’s how the thieves figured out about the paperwork, the passwords, and gathered information about the location of the Keep.”

“So the Tevinters were tortured. We’re dealing with some really charming people here,” Lavellan sighs. “I suppose they just never thought to ask if those they killed were slaves or free servingmen. I wonder how many people we’re up against. There certainly were people outside the Keep that detonated the bombs that made a hole in the outer wall and it’s...unlikely six men took out the whole retinue of fifteen. Tevinter sent a number veteran battlemages as guards. I guess this post wasn’t the relaxing reprieve from Seheron they were probably hoping for.”

“I’ve been thinking the same. Harding says there’s been no reports of large groups seen traveling, and with the terrain it’s hard to make your way through the area unless you use the roads, which are well-frequented near the Crossroads at Makria,” Cullen says. ”We’re trying to get as many men as we reasonably can to head into the area, or at least to major waypoints where it’s likely that travelers might pass through. Harding is good at accomplishing tough objectives with few resources, but even with her talent she’s stretched thin. What we have right there are the scouts that left the dig site and the staff of Clattering Keep, and we already have taken too many men off security for the facility.”

Lavellan gives a “Mm-hmm” in agreement as she stifles a yawn. She is a little sad she missed Harding at Clattering Keep on the account of the Lieutenant being far afield managing the search. Because the Inquisitor is largely confined to Skyhold and the venues of political ventures, she does not see the frontier-bound dwarf in person much these days. It’s all so different than it was. “Do either of you have any connections in the region we could call on for help?” Lavellan asks.

Josephine volunteers, “I went to finishing school with a Baroness who lives two days ride from Makria. She is a trustworthy friend, maintains an impressive militia, and owes me a number of favors on account of her…impressive lack of social grace. One of our scouts is riding to her hall to request that she send some of her men to search for anyone carrying our contraband. Though I worry they might balk at being asked to carry a magical item.”

Cullen also offers, “There’s a grotto called Flatwater Nook off a branch of the river nearby about a day away. Local tradesmen and smugglers will draw anchor if they wish to transport goods down the river without paying exorbitant dock fees and trade taxes to the local liege. The man who runs the docks there was Inquisition during the War. He’s called Jan Kinnon, and he’s a reliable connection to the Marches’ underworld. I’ve requested that our patrols reach out to him.”

Lavellan takes a moment to put a face to the name. “Oh! He’s that logistician with the really strange accent that’s….half Nevarran and half Starkhaven? When he was at Skyhold, he kept the office directly under yours in the ramparts.”

“Right. Kinnon is an old friend of mine, originally a smuggler from Kirkwall. Relatively honest, especially considering his trade,” Cullen explains. “I first retained his services to make covert arrangements in Kirkwall necessitated by Knight-Commander Meredith’s madness. I recruited him to work for us during the War to manage our army’s supply routes. He retired back to the Marches but from time to time he sends me information he thinks warrants my attention. It’s possible that the thieves might try and push out of Flatwater Nook, or that Kinnon has heard news of suspicious activity.”

“I remember Mister Kinnon.” Through the years she has, as all of them have, sounded a number of similar concerns, but Josephine always seems regretful and pained as she points it out: “He...is an elf.”

“I don’t think we have to worry about whether or not Solas is watching what we’re doing this time.” Lavellan gives a sheepish laugh. Though Josephine and Cullen haven’t expressed anger towards her, she can feel their extreme discomfort.

“Speaking of Solas…where does he have you right now? Can you tell?” the Commander asks. It seems like he is waiting for Lavellan to insinuate through some sort of coded message that she has been kidnapped and is in need of rescue immediately.

“I can’t figure out other than ‘somewhere in the north, by the sea.’” That much is obvious from the warm weather. Soon after she was brought to the house, Lavellan took her jacket and vest off and untied her ascot so that it hangs open around her neck, allowing her to undo her top three buttons. Otherwise she thinks she might begin to sweat. Her short dark hair lifts in the costal breeze as the crashing waves sound against the cliffs’ pale faces. The sea smells faintly like salt and warm detritus. Lumps of seaweed heap on the rocks below: she imagines the scent of it cooking upon the warm stone must be quite strong on hot days down below. Even with the grey skies and pallor of impending rain, the view from the terrace is pleasant and Lavellan must admit that Solas has good taste in real estate. Far down the shoreline she can see a stretch of white sand beach spilling forth from a verdantly forested gap in the chalk crags and bending around the contour of the coast. “I think I might be on an island.”

Lavellan wonders idly if Solas ever goes down to the little beach. It had been almost surprising to her when she learned that the pale, lightly freckled bald man quite enjoyed the sun and sand, but it became much less so when Solas, prompted by gentle teasing, explained he found the conditions ideal for napping. She remembers returning to camp at oases in the Western Wastes of Orlais where she would dump sand from her greaves and peel her sweat-drenched arming doublet from her tightly-wound and muscular form. If Solas had not ventured out with her that day, Lavellan would often find him posted up at the edge of desert pools on a mat under a makeshift canopy. He tended to have a book resting with him but Lavellan cannot recall ever coming upon him reading. Invariably Solas would be asleep, stretched out in little but linens as the activity of the campsite carried on around him.

She recalls his hands, calloused from his staff and marked with silly tan lines from his raggedy fingerless gloves, curled atop his chest and stomach and the loose bent of his legs, handsomely toned from the exertion of adventure and spread with light reddish hairs, as he laid back in relaxation. There is a concession towards vulnerability in the usually guarded man that Lavellan had found especially sexy and endearing. Sometimes when she approached him Solas would rouse himself and they would chat about their adventures: hers amongst the shifting sands and his in his dreams. Perhaps they would rise and venture forth together from the shade to dip their bare feet in the oasis’s water. Other times she would join him in repose. Even under the canopy it would be too hot, too sweaty, and too public to cuddle so the elves would clasp hands and doze feeling the warmth of the sand through the mat. The memories are sweet and as such give her a stomach ache.

As she watches the waves crash in against the white sand below Lavellan decides that it would be in bad taste for Solas to take detours from the Path of Death to loll about like a lazy old dog on the beach. The air is heavy and wet and Lavellan can see sheets of rain pouring down over the sea out in the distance. She should probably go in soon if she wants to avoid being drenched.

Josephine breaks the silence that has settled among the three. “How are you faring? You have spent the whole day with a dangerous enemy—who happens to be the man that broke your heart.” A deep worry is betrayed by the Ambassador’s voice and Lavellan hopes it is more for their hopelessly damaged operational security than it is for her feelings.

“Broke my heart? I don’t know if I’d say it like that.” Lavellan forces a laugh. She was far, far, far from a stranger to romance and sex when she met Solas, but love had been near foreign to her—she had only had one girlfriend previously and the end of that relationship had been amicable. Prior experience had left her entirely unprepared to deal with the emotional fallout of being left suddenly without reason and then completely abandoned, even before Solas returned with his terrible secrets. Lavellan had tried to pretend to others that what happened did not matter to her, or that she didn’t want to dwell on it and couldn’t care less if Solas was dead, but it had been obvious to everyone, apparently, that she was hurt deeply. Lavellan hates being pitied. And she thought she was good at lying—perhaps she still is, and this is another thing where the matter of Solas is an abberation.

The Commander makes a noise somewhere between a sigh and a groan to respond to Lavellan’s dismissal. “Lavellan, you were beside yourself for months after he disappeared.”

“A lot was going on! It was a strange time for all of us. The War ended, and I had all kinds of stress built up—“

“—you _still_  get downright squirrelly when you hear his proper name!” Cullen accuses. “Listen, Inquisitor, I’m not an expert on anything of the sort but I’ve been through my fare share of hardship and crisis. I say this not as your general, but as your friend: not accepting that Solas has injured you deeply will only—“

“—I’m not in denial!” Lavellan snaps to interrupt Cullen. It’s a kind, good sentiment he has, she knows. “I appreciate the concern. Really. But it’s embarrassing for me, alright? In multiple, multiple ways Solas humiliated me, and now is a constant problem we have no good plan to handle. I have no idea what I’m doing right now. I thought that if I had him with me I could at least monitor him, or prevent situations where he would kill our personnel, or maybe do something to stop him or delay him from getting the artifact. But now he’s gone and just…stranded me somewhere. So I went behind your backs and let you down—no matter how I justify it, I have—and for what? I haven’t done any good at all!” She can feel the tension on the other end of the connection and shivering in her own frustration she forces herself to breathe slowly and focuses on becoming calm. “On the bright side, I’m fairly certain that this is where he lives. So he’s probably didn’t leave me here to rot, and is coming back at some point.”

Josephine asks, “So he just...left you in his home? Have you been able to find any information we can use?”

“I did go through the house, but unless it’s very well hidden, there’s nothing related to his plans here. From knowing him, I’d venture to guess that Solas doesn’t bring work where he sleeps,” responds Lavellan. Dreaming in sour places wears on Solas. She remembers that well. When their party laid camp near sites of past tragedy or in war-torn countryside the maudlin mage would emerge each day from his tent with heavy eyelids and slumped shoulders, his gaze tired and distant. _My wanderings are tethered to the place in which I dream: though I may roam I cannot escape the tragedy held here entirely,_ Solas had once glumly informed Lavellan. _It is fitting. All those who anguished on these planes could not choose to abscond from their suffering. Why should such luxury be afforded to a voyeur like me?_

The planes and woodlands of the Dales, lands ravaged by warfare both ancient and anew, had been particularly rough on the elf. Solas and Lavellan did not typically share a tent in the field but when she sensed his restlessness and fatigue she would invite him to lay by her side for his comfort. _You know how poorly I sleep. I’m not getting rest anyways,_ she reassured him time and time again as she coaxed him into her embrace. _Come on. How many times have you helped me get to bed? It has to be a thousand._ Tangled in her arms Solas would shiver and grasp to her form, vocalizing ages worth of miseries in muffled sobs and yelps and through this Lavellan’s hands ran circles on his ribcage and shoulders and she would gently scratch his scalp as she pressed soft kisses on his temples and atop the blades of his pointed ears. As he held close to her she whispered soft reassurances to him in their People’s dying tongue, telling him that they still had tomorrow, that she was working so hard to make the suffering stop, that he was working so hard to make the suffering stop. Sometimes her clumsy Elvish would reach through the mire of nightmares to him and he would calm, his gentle even breathing sometimes dragging her with him to quiet slumber.

Lavellan blinks rapidly to dispel the weight of her heavy eyelids and wonders if Solas finds his current work quite so grim as he found the bloody past and present of the Dales. Had Solas ever really been so deeply upset, or had he been trying to endear himself to her by feigning vulnerability? He has claimed time and time again to have truly loved her. Today he has certainly shown her a good deal of affection. Lavellan returns involuntarily to wondering if Solas still harbors his former sexual attraction to her before abridging that gross thought process by deciding it is likely he is still trying to manipulate her.

The Commander’s voice pulls her into the moment. “At least he gave you the location of a mirror near Skyhold. I’ve sent trustworthy men to recover it, though I assume Solas was likely clever enough to arrange for it to be moved once the two of you passed through,” Cullen says, a grumble rising in the last thought.

Josephine asks, “Do we have any theories regarding the person who gave Solas the information about the artifact?”

“Unless Charter’s turned on us, I’m almost certain it’s the man that runs information from her offices to Leliana’s in Val Royeaux,” Lavellan says. The Divine Victoria cannot be seen with a sending crystal—many in the Chantry are still conservative when it comes to magic. To pursue her progressive policies Leliana must maintain a decorum that does not permit the use of Tevinter gadgetry, and as such her old second-in-command is responsible for holding the device. The Spymaster for both the Chantry and its alleged honor guard, Charter works between Skyhold and Val Royeaux managing intelligence networks Leliana once did. It is frustrating to Lavellan that she does not have someone entirely dedicated to the Inquisition working permanently in-house, though because of the crystals little efficacy is lost. “Solas seems incredibly anxious about recovering the Conflux. We had information about it since Harding reported from the dig site over a week ago, and Solas did nothing then. Yesterday, we sent word to Charter about the situation only once the Conflux was secured at Clattering Keep. Only then did Solas try to visit me in the Fade, and this morning he showed up at Skyhold. It has to be someone in Val Royeaux—unless someone was negligent enough to leave a written report laying out for a maid to find, it’s probably Charter’s runner. What’s his name? Cartwright?”

Confusion is audible in Josephine’s voice. “Cartwright is human, though. We checked to ensure no Viddathari ties, but working for Solas? It makes no sense!”  
  
“It doesn’t have to be ideological. Someone may have bought him off,” Cullen suggests.

“They would have had to offer an exorbitant amount,” Josephine replies. “Running messages from the Spymaster to the Divine was a position Cartwright earned from years of trustworthy service—and many of those years were spent at dangerous posts. His current position is safe and pays well. Why risk what he had for gold?”

Cullen gives a knowing scoff. “I saw it all the time with knights at the Gallows. Especially with drunkards and gamblers.” Lavellan can imagine him shaking his head in Josephine’s office back in Skyhold. “Once they’re deep enough in debt, even soldiers who were once steadfast and loyal may convince themselves they do no harm by committing small transgressions in exchange for coin. Those betrayals of trust always add up.”

Do they really not know? “The man’s elf-blooded,” Lavellan announces. From their confused silence, Lavellan figures that her advisors did not, in fact, know. “What? Do you not look past the ears at elves? I mean, you can’t always tell when someone’s half elf but Cartwright definitely takes after an elven parent. You can see it in his eyes and nose, and in his cheekbones a little.” Bitterness takes hold of her as she continues, “I didn’t know Cartwright well enough when he was stationed in Skyhold to ever ask about his background, but he could have grown up in the filth of an alienage, or cramped in servants’ quarters, or starving in the wilds with the Dalish. It’s possible he experienced all the injustices the world affords to the People—and was just as susceptible to Solas’s lies as someone with pointed ears. I thought we were all being so careful to watch our elves now. This is something that should have been picked up on in any sort of investigation. I wonder how many other people you’ve failed to properly screen.” Lavellan’s tone skirts on venomous and she realizes she’s lost something in tact over the past few years. She used to be downright charming, but she’s sharper and meaner than she was, and far less likable—she wonders how she even plays politics now. The first fat droplets of rain begin to fall on the terrace. Lavellan looks down and watches as two, three, four dark splotches appear on the stone at her bare feet.

“Inquisitor, I—“

“Oh. I am sorry, I didn’t mean—“

Still looking down as she begins to feel the rain atop her head, Lavellan cuts them off hurriedly when she hears the sad contrition in their voices. “—Sorry, sorry. I don’t mean to admonish. Really. We don’t even know if Cartwright actually is the leak. I just—I really shouldn’t have said anything. I’ve done enough stupid things today for the entire Inquisition.” The wind begins to tug at her undone ascot and she decides to withdraw into the shelter of the house. It is dark and warm there. “If Solas kills me, just make sure to give my replacement a thorough background check, will you?”

“Inquisitor, please! Do not talk like that,” Josephine exclaims as the Inquisitor turns her back on the expanse of the sea and slips inside through the open double doors. She awkwardly tries to grab one handle of the glass-paned doors in her hand with the crystal and tries to hook her prosthetic in the handle with the other. With a bit of difficulty she manages to get them shut. “Please be safe.”

“I also am concerned for you. I would advise you to find a way back immediately. Where you’re at is dangerous.” The Commander pauses, and quite sourly he adds, “I don’t like that Solas was able to get into Skyhold so easily this morning.”

“I don’t like it either. But are you surprised by it? Skyhold was his once,” Lavellan reminds her advisors. It is not just the castle that came from him—the War that the Inquisition rose to preeminence to fight, the magic to stop the rifts that made the Inquisition indispensable to extant powers, and now the shadow conflict that has allowed Lavellan to rebuild the Inquisition’s strength are all odd and bloody blessings of the Dread Wolf. It is on account of meddling by Solas that the Inquisition was ever more than a ramshackle peacekeeping force set to the thankless task of putting down a war between guerrilla bands of mages and templars, and on account of meddling by Solas that Lavellan, born to the wretched life of a Dalish itinerant, stands equal with Kings and Emperesses as she plays her hand at steering the continent’s course. “Solas gave us almost everything we have.”

After some further planning, eventually Lavellan bids her advisors farewell and severs the magical connection. “What now?” Lavellan asks herself. She has already searched through the house. From what Lavellan surmises the home was built as some sort of vacation hideaway for nobility. On its lower levels, there are modest rooms for the entertainment of limited parties of guests, including a hall, a salon, and a dining room. Behind the kitchens, in which Lavellan discovered a paltry store of bread, salted meat, and dried fruit, there are quarters for a small staff of three or four, and Lavellan has found only three bedrooms in the guest apartments. All the rooms are filled with strange and delicate wooden furniture shaped of pale vines the color of driftwood knotted intricately together, occasionally sporting turquoise gems in the tangles. Geometric mosaics in brilliant stone are complimented by teal textile décor in each area that stays consistent through the home—though there are some fur accents here and there Lavellan has a feeling that Solas did not design the interior. The place seems as if it is carved out of the side of the cliff, most rooms are pressed along the face and there is ample natural lighting through the cut windows, even in the gloomy weather. All of the rooms except the study she now stands in and the master bedchamber where Solas apparently stays seem untouched but there is no dust or wear. Lavellan wonders how old the house is.

It is sometime in the late afternoon and to abate her growing restlessness the Inquisitor decides to further inspect the study where she is essentially trapped. It is a very pleasant space, and Lavellan imagines it must be more beautiful when the sky and sea are clear and bright azure. A desk of faded wood tangles supporting a polished stone top abuts with a large teal couch heaped with pillows, blankets, and furs. Sturdy and well-stocked bookshelves that wrap the wall by the faded wood desk seem to be hewn of marbled blue stone. The room holds an impressive amount of paper clutter—books and notes on Solas’s current diversions and curiosities are piled around on the tables and chairs. Lavellan has sorted through the notes all and unless they are in code Lavellan does not think they are any part of Solas’s plan to tear down the Veil and destroy the world. The titles don’t seem particularly threatening, either: _Oral Traditions of Rivain. Epistemology and the Fade. A History of Orlesian Culinary Culture and Cuisine. Canids of the Continent: The Definitive Illustrated Compendium of Thedosian Wolves and Dogs. And They Said I Couldn’t Write a Book!: An Autobiography of King Alistair of Fereldan._ After assessing the books strewn on the desk Lavellan peruses the selection on Solas’s shelves. Many of the books are ancient and magical like those at the remnants of the library she found through the mirrors during the Exalted Council and various others seem to be four or five hundred years old, but a good portion of Solas’s collection is contemporary. Among these she finds a number of the late Evander Serranus’s histories, as well as several anthologies of _Hard in Hightown_ serials. From the wear of their cracked and faded spines the ever-pulpy  _Hard in Hightown_  volumes seem to be well-loved. Were the copies acquired secondhand? Much like his friendly rapport with the apothecary had upset her, something about the idea of Solas reading and re-reading Varric’s crime stories evokes a dully angry sadness in Lavellan.

In a corner of the study tucked towards the bedroom door sits a pile of blank canvases behind a folded easel. Lavellan recalls that she brought along Solas’s old paintbrushes for him and can’t for the life of her comprehend why she had been so set on returning them. He doesn’t deserve niceties. He might not even want them—he had abandoned them, after all, just like he had her. Where is Solas now? What is he doing? What is he telling his people? What if he’s organizing that the gaatlock produced by Project Jackdaw in Clattering Keep be stolen from storage? She ask that the Commander send more security to the site, but still—

The consistent and steady patter of rain sounds on the terrace and against the glass panes of the big windows to the study and Lavellan takes stock of the fact that she is tired and the real part of her left arm aches terribly up to the shoulder. Lavellan has her entire life been an insomniac, but her fatigue and the illness left by the Anchor call her to sleep. She has a rule against laying down during the day even when she is exhausted and in pain, and she does not want to fall asleep in Solas’s territory. At the same time, she is astoundingly exhausted and increasingly sore and she thinks it is possible that she might pass out—Lavellan would rather control her lack of consciousness. It’s not like she can do anything to Solas when she’s awake, anyways. She sees that the sumptuously cushioned couch has a wide seat broader than most of the mats she slept upon growing up. The pillows and throws make resting on the couch an even more attractive option. Lavellan decides she will doze on the couch. She has a feeling Solas will come up to his study immediately upon getting back and thinks that if she goes down to the guest rooms, she might sleep through his return and leave him without her ineffective supervision for a longer stretch of time.

Lavellan removes her left glove to expose the metal joints of the hand beneath, and with the right she opens the cinch at the wrist of the prosthetic. She moves to undo a couple buttons on her shirt, so she can reach inside and begin releasing the buckles and latches that hold the arm firmly in place. Once it is free, she lets the hand drop off through the sleeve onto the cushion and carefully pulls the straps through the arm of her shirt. She places the arm aside on a low table but before laying down she does her best to roll up her sleeve and secure the folded fabric just above her elbow. She hates empty and flapping sleeves.

Lavellan has always rested poorly, but her duties and anxieties and frustrations mingle together with her exhaustion into a horrible paralyzed nothingness that allows sleep to overtake her quickly.

* * *

  
The dream is a window into another dream. Bare feet fall on stones and the stones blot together like watercolor paints, dark and confounded as they splotch and spread. Physicality frays here, and the entire chamber teeters on the edge of corporeality and spirit. A strange court looms in the corners of the Fade, far from what has ever come to touch the solid world, eager to greet its visitor. The hallowed and forgotten dignitaries sit shifting and blending into their chairs and into their history and into one another, and in the echoing discordance the figures at the highest chairs seem to speak at once with those that hang in the margins.

The visitor is a subject of fascination: his presence seems to foist a sort of solidity onto his hosts that they find novel but perhaps unpleasant. Wisps swirl around the outsider and figures rise up from the stones and lean down from on high to look over his person in their shrewd but blank assessment. The visitor is an elf who shines in the soft and shambling gloom with the hard glimmer of fine gold jewelry. His black cloak is decorated with pauldrons of fur and beneath it he is swaddled in fine silks in deep and subtle colors that contrast with his bright adornments. Though he dresses like a prince and imposes his nature on the court, the visitor is unassuming in his air and he waits quietly to be spoken to.

A deep voice booms from the highest echelons over the visitor’s head, ringing and ricocheting as it makes its descent from somewhere far above: “My, my. You haven’t been here in some time.”

Undefined figures flicking in and out of recognizable form fill the chamber. Strange lords of the lost sit atop their thrones and perch on hobbled barstools around the room and they clamor: “How long?” “But he was just here.” “He left?” “What pretty grey eyes he has. I forgot eyes.” “Where has your mind been?” “I missed him.” “I didn’t.” “Who?” “I remember you. Where’s the rest of your pack?” “Don’t you remember me?” “Hello, hello!”

The visitor casts his attention up into the swirling mists and greets the voices both deep and clamoring with warm but sad familiarity. “It has been long, old friends. I apologize for coming here like this. I cannot dream as you do this time.”

“That does not displease us. We have eternity to stand staring over the brink into nothingness. You drawing our attention now does little to disrupt our refuge,” the deep voice muses. “Your associate watches from afar but he will not come here himself. I remember him from long ago. Tell me, are those ravens on his cloak or are they vultures?”

A wry grin spreads across the visitor’s lips but he does not answer the question. “You too keep watch over places you dare not go. I think you know why I am here.” His voice is gentle but in it there is an impatient edge.

The clamor begins: “Ah! I know.” “I don’t.” “This is our hall, our home.” “It’s back!” “Why don’t you come to ask how we are?” “You are the only one who visits. I’m glad you’re here.” “You named it the Conflux? How silly.” “I still don’t know who he is.” “I know!”

“So I was correct! You do know it!” the visitor exclaims.

Rejoining: “But I destroyed it! I almost recall.” “No, I destroyed it! I was told so.” “The both of you destroyed it!” “Neither of you destroyed it.” “I don’t remember if it was destroyed.” “I forgot.” “Why do they have it? They shouldn’t have anything.”

“You say the Conflux was destroyed. Clearly you did not destroy it well enough,” the visitor mutters before calling out to the heights above again, “Is it true what I have heard? Have some among you walked in the Void?”

The clamor again: “The Void!” “Yes. I remember. Or do I?” “I wouldn’t call it walking.” “The Void?” “The Void!” “No, not me.” “You have, you just forgot.” “I ran! I ran!” “The Void!” “Where is the Void? I lost it.”

The deep voice seeps down through the chattering of the others. “Don’t you elves say we reside there? That this is the Void?”

The visitor grimaces. “So you call yourselves elves no longer.”

“What is an elf?” The voice rains down in a droll, purring rumble. “And why should I want to be one?”

“This again. I absolutely refuse to entertain it today!” The visitor rolls his eyes and runs his fingers through his long auburn hair to clear his face of strands that have fallen loose of his braids. “But as to your first questions: Yes. Some elves born into a younger world than you or even me would in their ignorance think this place the Void. They do not stray far from the aspects of the Fade that touch the physical realm and only have interest in those magics that might bring them fortune and prestige. They disdain those spirits that have no interest in their precious material things, and they detest you for willingly ceding all the things they think inextricable to themselves. Moreover they fear you and the power you wield that they cannot understand.” An anger has manifested in his voice but he forces a sort of detachment as he far too intently regards the golden rings that adorn his fingers. “But I do understand. I know the nature of this place and I know the nature of present company.”

A laugh like a war drum tumbles down the stacks of seats and theatre-boxes that overflow with the undefined. The voice asks, “Do you want a reward?”

The visitor grows clearly irate and moves from his rings to fiddle with the large hoops and delicate chains hanging from his pointed ears as he says flatly but still with a forced softness, “I want to know what you know about the orb.”

The clamor comes again: “You’ll know about the orb soon enough!” “And then you won’t!” “It was in a mine this time?” “It must have came to the Huntress like it came to us.” “It didn’t come to us.” “Is it the same one? Or identical? Or similar?” “It has been so long.” “You have always thought to ask.” “I knew so much, but I forgot.” “We forgot!”

“So you have seen something of its kind?” The visitor demands up into the court, “What do you mean, you forgot? Please, tell me your story. Or have you become as demons, demanding your pound of flesh before you speak?”

The clamor once more, jeering and insisting: “Flesh? Most of us have forsaken flesh.” “You have, I haven’t. Not all the way.” “We mean we forgot!” “Maybe there’s one whole piece between us.” “No, not even!” “There are things we can tell you, and things we will.” “Do you truly not remember?” “I don’t.” “I don’t.” “I do. Maybe.” “We cannot tell you much.” “I want to tell him.” “No, we can’t say anything!”

From above the deep voice thunders: “There are things that are better left unsaid, put to rest in fragments and forgotten.”

“That’s awfully unsatisfying,” the visitor says as he chokes back impatience.

The deeper voice is quick to retort, “You are a bright child, but a child still. You think all knowledge is yours to take for your own. You do not know the fear born of knowledge.”

“Knowledge is anathema to fear,” the visitor shoots back with his eyes narrowed. He is tired of fiddling with his jewelry and his voice, no longer quite so soft, spikes as it speeds and echoes through the chamber of shadowy dimension. “Yes, it is true some respite from worry may be found in utter ignorance, but—“

“—you are so proud of your mind. You are an admirable sort of fool, but a fool still.” The court laughs with the booming voice’s insult and dark lights the color of bruises dance in the air with the mirth.

The visitor roils in anger and the world around him reacts, the divisions between the stones on the floor dividing and straightening as they take on his tension. “What has this to do with pride? How dare you call me a fool. I only wish to understand! Surely I can—“

“Understand!” The voice booms, “How arrogant of you to think that you can understand. You cannot understand your world—only impose your paradigms and frameworks on what scarce things you perceive so you may warp them to your whims. We once thought we could understand. The orb was not intended for our understanding, nor is it intended for yours. We learned that lesson well.”

“Then who was intended to understand it?” The visitor asks in enraged bewilderment. In his terse movements his jewelry clanks. “The elvhen are the stewards of this world. Who else would—“

“Your people call us Forgotten,” the booming voice presses down, “but it is meant only as an affront. You remember and you will continue to do so. There are those among us who did walk in the Void and we will extract the very memory from ourselves—no matter how deeply it is scarred into our beings. What traces we now keep, we have fragmented and scattered amongst ourselves and one day they will dissolve entirely. What we are left with keeps us afraid, keeps us wary, and soon too we shall be fortunate to lose that.”

The clamor joins in once more as the room begins to collapse in: “There is so much more!” “So much more!” “I forgot already!” “Lucky!” “What you make manifest with your mind will come to feed.” “Will I really forget? I want to forget.” “The further into the darkness you reach, the more completely you will be consumed.” “We learned that we would have to forget!” “Is it why we are forgotten?” “You don’t understand! You can’t understand!”

“Give me something. Anything! What you know is vital!” Desperately reaching upwards, the visitor implores, “Please! I need answers!”

“You don’t need answers!” “You shouldn’t want answers!” “You don’t even have questions!” “You can’t know!” “Leave!” “Leave and forget!” “Howl all you’d like—I will not speak.” “I want to help. I want to. I can’t.” “Go! Go!” “It’s back. Why did he bring it back?” “Go! While you can, go!” The clamor shrieks down in a discordant chorus and chases out the dreaming world.

* * *

  
Lavellan awakens with a gasp and the heavy fall of rain washes away the clamoring voices that still resonate between her ears. Yawning she pulls herself up to sit on the couch and takes in her surroundings. She does not immediately recognize the ceiling’s bright mosaic, the now-illuminated lamps that hang down to casting warm light about the room, or the lavishly stocked bookshelves lining the walls and for a split second she is overcome by a sort of stilted panic at the strange environment before she recalls where she is and why she is there. The Inquisitor shakes her head rapidly to ground herself as memories of her strange vision begin to recede from her as dreams are wont to do.

“Inquisitor,” Solas greets from his desk, and Lavellan almost jumps in surprise again. He’s here: much for her hunter’s senses. Solas is standing and looks over his desk and the back of the couch to observe Lavellan for a short while and there’s a softness in his regard. He must have been in the room with her for some time and the thought of him watching over her slumber, even fondly, sits uneasily with her. She really shoudln’t have let herself sleep. Solas breaks the attention afforded to Lavellan off and turns his focus to something before him in his desk’s cradle of clutter. With his gaze cast down, he says, “You seemed very comfortable sleeping when I arrived, and I thought it best not to wake you.”

Lavellan rolls her eyes and swallows a sigh. “I love how considerate you are. How long have you been back?” Lavellan asks as she rubs one eye at a time with her right hand before hauling herself off the couch and ambling around the end table to join Solas at his desk. She sees that he has abandoned his ugly fur-lined floral coat in the humidity of the warm and rainy coastal clime. Now in a simple shirt sporting a couple of patches and legging trousers the color of oxblood, accompanied by his old wolf’s jaw necklace, there is something comfortable and familiar about Solas’s manner and almost unthinkingly Lavellan angles to settle in close to him to watch what he is doing. Even though she is very unhappy with him a reflex from eight years ago bubbles up and she has to stop herself from letting her right hand travel a few inches to scratch light little circles on the back of his thigh. Even if they were on good terms he might not want her little caresses, and she might not want to give them. On the desk Solas appears to be fiddling with what looks like a small compass by directing tiny lights about with movements of his fingers. A number of glowing points hang in the air around the device, glowing and blinking in a way reminiscent of fireflies floating in a forest grove. The lights whirl about with his slightest ministrations and Solas gives small hums as he manipulates them.

In the quiet as he works Lavellan recognizes Solas as the court’s gold-adorned visitor in the dream held tenuously in her memory—already her recollection has decayed to loose impression, but who else could it be? His memories must have been caught by spirits lurking near the Veil in his home. In some ways, Lavellan is a little surprised by the realization. The young man she watched had been so quick to lose his temper, so eager rise to the insults of the amorphous crowd. Solas’s pleas echo in the back of her mind, asking things of his hosts that would cause them a great deal of pain to give. In some ways, Solas has not changed.

After a while, the mage responds to the Inquisitor’s question in brief: “I have not been back long.” Lavellan says nothing and watches his hands. There is a large scar across Solas’s right palm where he had caught the knife of a Red Templar assassin that had tried to blindside the Inquisitor while she was engaged with one of the corrupted knights during a skirmish in the Emprise. At the close of the fighting, no sooner than Lavellan extracted her bastard sword from the cleaved torso of her last enemy did she tear off her helmet, rush to Solas’s side, and set to taking stock of the profusely bleeding injury he had incurred protecting her. _I‘ll try my best but I don’t think I can kiss that better,_  Lavellan had said of the nasty bone-deep gash as she began to undo her armor so she could take off articles of clothing and make him a compress. Despite shaking with shock and steadily dripping dark blood into the trampled snow, Solas had laughed. _Thank goodness I happen to have some skill with healing magic. Right now if you could find me a lyrium draught I don’t think this will need further attention. Except, perhaps, the kiss._ The memory leaves Lavellan quiet and when Solas realizes he is being answered by a stretch of silence he looks up from his work at Lavellan. In close quarters their gazes meet and he tilts his head as he studies her aspect carefully. His lips gently part and Lavellan feels his line of sight drop low into the space between the two of them and just a bit beyond. There is something appreciative in his regard of her and her mind wanders back to her question of his attraction to her. Seemingly unbothered by their proximity he ventures, “Something is the matter.”

“I think you know,” an Lavellan says with irritation mustered in her voice and in response Solas has the gall to let slip a single sardonic chuckle, which she involuntarily joins. He’s so utterly terrible, she thinks as she watches the little rise of his sharp cheeks into a tiny strained smile. Lavellan can see the tension behind the expression and in the way his hands have moved—Solas is wound up miserably tight. Lavellan realizes that if she touches him at unawares he might flinch or jump in jarred shock. Or he might do worse. A few hours prior she had watched him respond to bad news by killing well north of a hundred birds in a spasm of frustration and upset. When she rejoined him inside the tower, Solas had very adamantly claimed it was entirely accidental. If that’s true, Lavellan might be even more bothered.

“My apologies,” Solas answers, and in an oddly tender manner he hurriedly continues, “I regret that you could not follow me to some of the places I was required to pay visit. Sincerely—I would not be handling this half so well if I did not have your company and would have preferred you by my side.”

The statement is strange and unwieldy but sweet enough to erode some of Lavellan’s animosity as she watches his hands work. Solas wants comfort from her, even if he does not realize he is requesting it. Lavellan has every right to refuse to placate him but she too is in need of a pleasant interchange and moreover is eager to prove herself useful to him after being left alone. She resents her desire for his approval. Still, Lavellan tries to be as soft as possible as she requests, “Can you explain to me what you’re doing?”

Solas answers, “I am attuning a dowsing mechanism. They are fairly standard in Tevinter and in the former Cirlcles, as they are useful for detecting and measuring otherwise unnoticeable magical anomalies. The Conflux has been removed from its case—though this is unfortunate, we can take advantage of the situation. It will be able to detect its outbursts when they occur, and will point us in the direction of the event. If all goes well we will be able to respond quickly and casualties will be minimal.”

“How does it work?” Lavellan asks. Sometimes getting Solas to explain something technical or arcane will dislodge him from depressive or anxious ruts. She is beginning to think this might not be one of those times and she wonders if she should try to engage him physically. Lavellan remembers holding Solas’s hand in the desert and of cradling him in her arms in the quiet refuge of a shared tent and mourns their old closeness. Her approach will have to be slow and gentle and in his line of vision so as not to startle him: maybe resting her hand on his shoulder or his chest, or nuzzling her forearm up against his? She realizes that through her frustration she wants to touch him and that is precisely why she should not do it.

“The power expelled by the orb is not recognizable in and of itself, but I can assume the sort of disruption an outburst would cause with respect to the Veil. There. It is done.” With a flourish of his hand he banishes the compass’s little lights and cuts short her planning of contact by pulling himself from the desk past her to pace about the room. “If I remember the behavior of the Conflux correctly, which I most certainly do, the dowsing mechanism will likely detect activity in approximately two days. Perhaps sooner. We must wait. Hopefully we can act before the entire world is cast into chaos. I can set up a connection between a pair of sending crystals for the two of us—I know you are familiar with them.” So she’s being sent home, Lavellan realizes, but their alliance is not yet terminated. She is still uneasy with the idea. Without Lavellan’s bidding, Solas carries on as he meanders about the room, his bare feet falling quick and flighty on the intricately patterned silken rugs that overlap and cover the stone floor. “I am concerned that our adverse party has a large number of elves in their employ. If they are seeking Elvish artifacts and have any skill or intuition as to their ends, my own operations could potentially be infiltrated by them. I recently have had to take precautions to purge Viddathari elves from my ranks, and your double agents...I do not look forward to the possibility of countering a third interest.”

“You think you’ve been infiltrated?” Lavellan asks. She tries to reassure him, “Solas. There’s no proof these people even know who you are.”

Solas blinks. He abruptly shakes his head and scratches his cheek and the back of his neck before crossing his arms over his chest. He seems not to know what to do with himself. “You are right. Thank you. I am not thinking quite rationally, and instead I am jumping at every shadow. I have even at times today found myself questioning your role in this matter, as absurd as that sounds. As you may be able to tell the Conflux sets me at deep unease. What I said about being glad for your presence…I would ask that you stay with me here if if the proposition did not—”

Lavellan quickly interrupts that line of thought, “I can tell how bothered you are. I think you might be getting more fatalistic now than you were during the War.” The clamoring voices from her dream float through her memory and she recalls the young man begging them for knowledge. Solas’s behavior is certainly different now. What has Solas learned since the day he stood in the shifting court? Did he find the fear in knowledge—whatever that meant? “Is physical destruction the extent of the threat the Conflux poses?”

Solas frowns as he continues pacing about the study. In an odd mixture of perturbance and eagerness, he fields his own questions to Lavellan: “What do you mean? Is the physical destruction of various darkspawn and their taint the extent of the threat the Blight poses? There are a number of ways to answer such—” Suddenly with his back to her where he stands across the room, Solas pauses. He turns to look upon Lavellan so she may watch a sort of bemused horror dawn over him, a pained smile stretching across his face. An air of maudlin entertainment drowns out his prior panic and he walks back towards where she stands at the desk to quietly ask her, “You dreamt in the Fade while you slept. What memory of mine found its way to you?” Nervous laughs lurk behind his serene question.

The Inquisitor not like this new pointed question at all, especially right after Solas has admitted to paranoia. “Does that matter?” Lavellan asks, suddenly less interested in his comfort than her own.

“Tell me please,” Solas demands, “I would like to know now.” He firmly places his hand on the desk beside Lavellan and leans towards her, trying to discern something from her aspect. Solas does not seem angry but from his aspect Lavellan almost wishes he was—she feels a dreadful excitement creeping up inside of her.

Lavellan does not back down, emboldened by the strength of a new awful realization that leaves a foul taste like blood in the corners her mouth. Smiling now herself she almost spits at Solas, “Of course. You’ve been lying to me. Or hiding things from me, I don’t care—whatever you’re keeping from me, I will find it out.”

To Lavellan’s ire, Solas laughs at her. It is at once remorseful and smug. “Certainly you will. Even with your unfortunate passions, you are a very smart girl.” He calls her a child again and in rage over that her smile is whisked away by a scowl as a nostril of her crooked nose flares. Solas’s new grim mirth plays in his voice before it drops out cold: “And then what? In all seriousness, Inquisitor, what will you do with your knowledge? How will you defy me?”

She doesn’t answer for a long moment and still scowling merely stares at him in bewilderment. He watches her back, cold, calm, impassive and she feels hate for him. She had been trying to be good to him, and for what? Not in payment for past behavior, surely. He has warped her into his own pathetic fool and the prideful part of her that denies and refuses it aches with disgust. Lavellan hates Solas as much as she loved him in equal grasping and needy measure—the whole of her is overcome with searing hot loathing and she can hardly stand still from her rage as her heart begins to pound in her chest. In the worst way she is exhilarated by his presence and proximity and the way the light from the lamps and the dim glow still spilling in from outside catch his eyes throws the cold grey an almost lavender cast. She remembers stone Qunari and hundreds of dead jackdaws and how calmly he had waited for her in her room and she feels as if she stands ankle deep in a great sea. At once she remembers the Anchor tearing the sky apart and his power pulsing in her body and it is as if she is taken up and away in a wave.

Solas is not a god, she reminds herself. She has seen him despair and if there were gods, gods would not despair. She sees now in him what she thinks is fear, and gods do not fear.

Her despised companion no longer paces and fidgets about. Solas is perfectly still and bathed in the soft illumination he reminds Lavellan of grand Elvish murals inlaid with gold conquering time tucked away in ruins and as the light flickers and shifts she fantasizes of bright Chantry windows where the Blessed Bride gazes down on her dominion from the frozen pulpit of her stained glass pyre. Even if Solas is no true deity he might as well be Lavellan’s god. He seems so intent to toy with her, and she is equally intent to dance for him in turn. As cruel and difficult as he has been as a lover, Solas has turned his sight upon her and in doing so by strange and mysterious ways has given her the whole world.

Lost for a moment she thinks of how sublimely gorgeous he is to her, even with his scars and wrinkles and the droop in his eyes. The objects of devotion—and her hatred is certainly a sort of perverse devotion—should all be so beautiful, not like the rough-hewn and weather-worn wolf statues to which her people left their paltry offerings. She hates him so much she finds herself wanting him vehemently but not in a way she has ever wanted him before. In a moment of enrapt and enraged weakness she asks her lovely monster, “What can I do? How do I destroy you?”

He laughs sweetly and it is the sick sweet of poison and decay. “You cannot destroy me. But I am glad how loath you will be to ever accept that,” Solas answers coolly, his steel eyes locked to her amber as he leans towards her to bring their noses a less than an inch apart. Again she feels like a halla fawn with tangled legs staring up wide-eyed at its end and she cannot look away from him as he appraises her fully, breaking eye contact so his gaze can run down her exposed neck and lower still. His temple almost touches hers as he tilts his head to get a better view of her body. For that brief moment a new emotion overtakes Solas, living and dying in a flash but not before Lavellan takes it in and lets her insides knot around his horrid impression. It is desire, hungry and ravenous like a bone-thin wolf crouched and set to seize upon prey. He wants her like she wants him and she will hate him so, so entirely if he touches her now, now when he speaks of her powerlessness against him. So quickly this animal want, aberrant in the reserved and quiet man, is eroded by an immense, immense sadness. Solas pulls back from Lavellan quickly and he winces and shudders, choking on what Lavellan can only recognize as shame. His lips softly part as if he is caught on a word, on a thought. He gives a deep exhale and his voice wavers. “Oh, no. I should not.”

Lavellan again wants something bad to happen and in an excited and infuriated whisper she invites it, “Has that ever stopped you before?”

“No. It never has,” Solas agrees, an expression halfway between a grin and a grimace manifesting on his face. He raps his fingers on the desk impatiently and looks her over once more as if he wants to eat her before he gives a thoroughly pained laugh wrought with self-hatred. The Inquisitor knows she is in trouble when Solas calls her by her given name: “Adahlen, do you fear me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Holidays! 
> 
> Also, updates might be slow from here—what i have written going forward requires much heavier editing than previous chapters.


	8. The Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas doesn’t need to be grim and fatalistic to get Lavellan into bed, but when Solas is being grim and fatalistic he does need to get Lavellan into bed.

“…what?”

“I asked you whether or not you fear me,” Solas repeats himself in a maddeningly calm and firm voice.

Lavellan rolls her eyes. “I heard the question. I just don’t know how you want me to answer.” She doesn’t want to answer it herself at all, not for her sake and not for his. She was tangled up in how she loved and loathed him, worshipped him and reviled him. She is aware of the tremendous power yet she regards her enraptured trap without terror. Even in bestial metaphor she has looked upon him more in fascination than in horror. The gnashing of the wolf’s jaw and the fumbling flight of the halla are movements in some sort of exalted choreography from natural proverb and not a miserable and thrashing struggle. Perhaps in him she has somehow come to believe in some sort of strange fate built on horrid analogies and jagged serendipities. She hates the idea and it feels like he has in some sense broken her. She cannot fear him.

Solas wrings pain from a laugh as he looks away from her, casting his grey eyes towards the window and the similarly-hued expanses of the soft velvet sky and dark steel waves. The warm glow of the room’s lamps dance golden-orange on the ridge of his cheeks, atop the blades of his pointed ears, and over his bald scalp as he looks to her and offers her a sickening plea, “As little as I am owed it, I want you to tell me the truth.”

Lavellan meets his gaze. At once it is stinging cold and searing hot—starving and fully awful in so many ways. Pinned beneath his plaintive stare she almost spits at Solas, “What do you think?”

For a long moment they stare at one another before he breaks the gaze to look down at his wolf’s jaw necklace that hangs tethered by leathered string running around his neck over his shoulders. Solas’s brow raises with his downcast frown and he cups the bone in one hand and runs his fingers through the ossiferous contours of the piece with the other. He gives a small and joyless chuckle as his line of sight returns to Lavellan. Solas ends his long pause abruptly: “You must be!” His attentions pour over her as they had upon the wolf’s jaw in his hands a moment before but with with a more frantic energy forcibly subdued, tight and coiled like a spring. “Though you are stubborn and cannot admit to yourself that you fight a losing war against me, in this case your pride has not outweighed your pragmatism. You have made it clear that your choice to ally has been premised entirely on an acceptance of your own limitations. And moreover you did just admit you have no idea how to overcome me.”

Brimming with seething hate Lavellan sees a bitter fondness tinging Solas’s morose accusations. Under the wretched tenderness of Solas’s regard Lavellan’s heart beats in her chest like a hammer. The sharp and clanging percussion is not driven by fear and if it is she will not admit to it. The Inquisitor would rather Solas strike her down as an ineffectual enemy rather than have him humor her like a pet or child for his own amusement. A third option where he revels in her weakness ekes in again through the cracks of her rage and floods her mind with a much sweeter and more unpleasant heat. She is in his home and from what she saw a moment before in his eyes, he wants her.

The horrible idea of struggling against Solas to his delight washes through Lavellan and it excites her as the imagery rolling through her mind takes a sexual turn. Her stomach flips and bumps raise on her forearms and on the back of her neck and she imagines his grasp on those parts of her body. Lavellan is almost overtaken by the rising fantasy of repudiating and then ceding to Solas’s attentions, tensing and releasing in his control. He has not touched her once since he has seen her, and apart from one brief and quickly withdrawn mistake he has not tried. His hands might ghost teasingly over her form as delicately as he now traces the surface of his wolf’s bone or might pin her firmly down and spread her open to lay her out as a feast, wide and twitching with the stretch of warm muscle and flushed flesh. In a moment she wants him to feel her heartbeat, to look into her eyes know she is unafraid as he takes her and she takes him in. The shock of the warm memory of his lips pressed to her throat and ear rends her from her reverie. Lavellan almost shivers out, “And that means I fear you?”

Solas finds her resistance and impudence charming, Lavellan thinks, and as alluded by she is by the concept she she wants to hate him for it. Yet there is something far too soft and perhaps too recalcitrant about the way his attentions fall upon her for his intent to be predatory. His eyes upon her are hungry and hollow, certainly. Wanting and grasping, without a doubt. The beginnings of a small smile slip quickly from Solas’s face as he explains, “Once you and I were very close. In that time you gave me the privilege of your confidence. I truly wish I could have returned that in kind.” Lavellan watches her sweet liar as he pads on bare feet slowly from around his desk, his focused trained upon her as he tracks a wide circle around the shelved perimeters of the little stone enclave. He looks like he might grab her, and begrudgingly she finds herself wanting that. If he engages suddenly she will not have time to dwell upon his transgressions, only to respond to his touch. “Among other intimacies you confided in me your misery and growing madness living amongst your people. You anguished in the unbearable loneliness, the wretched boredom, the complete and total powerlessness inflicted upon you by your low status and race. From the time you were a child you saw the world for what it was: capricious and unfair. You were at the mercy of the beasts of the wilds and the elements, the crude stupidity of your clan’s leadership, and the whims of frontier lords and backwood militias with swords and torches. Through cunning you might overcome that, and you did, but what of what lay beyond? Faintly through the torn pages of fragmented and water-damaged books you saw something so immense you could hardly comprehend: the hulking frame of the great world of which you stood at the periphery.

“Decrees made in grand cathedrals and in the courts at Halamshiral and the magisterium in Minrathous and even in the halls of petty Marcher cities in between could shake the wilds far beyond their jurisdictions, and send soldiers and slavers to chase you through your mountain highlands and forest glens. You knew even your realm was in some sense theirs and felt a keen awareness that you, a Dalish elf, would never reach their gilded echelons and wrest control of your world. In the face of this all you felt small. You felt weak and in you enraged madness bloomed.” Solas stands close to her and raises his hand slightly as if he is going to cup and assess her face delicately like he might softly turn the petals of a flower. Lavellan is going to let him touch her and steels herself in an almost giddy loathing excitement but the motion dies as it is born and he clenches his hand before flexing his fingers restlessly. Solas continues, “Let us not now talk of gods—if you were nothing before a corporeal lord, what would you be before your Creators or Maker, watching you from far away past the Fade and beyond the Void?”

Lavellan remains staid under Solas’s attention. He surveys her too closely, as if he is gauging by her reaction whether or not what he says is true. In part it is—she had told him these things years ago and meant them. But that does not mean she fears him now. That very day Solas and the circumstances surrounding his appearance had provoked Lavellan to erratic behavior from anger and frustration, but fear? It does not matter to Lavellan how powerful Solas is. She refuses to fear him. Like cold and hunger Lavellan has felt fear deep in her bones and had been raised on an abundant diet of the stuff in the wilds. Yet beyond childhood she had lost her taste for the bitter cloying stuff. She had grown too tall for her world, and too strong, too fast, too smart for fear. Certainly she had cause for caution, but she could not afford for fear. What was its use other than locking legs and unsteadying hands?

Solas holds himself still just within Lavellan’s reach and as he goes on it becomes clear to Lavellan why he asked a horrible question and why he has tried so hard to convince himself of its horrible answer: “After the events of the Conclave, of course, your position in the world changed. By sheer luck you were given a chance at power and you seized it brilliantly, rising to hold the continent in the grasp of your command. Though you repudiated it, you were called a god for your might. During your tenure at the head of the Inquisition, you grew used to agency and efficacy.” Solas stops and pauses, reprising his long appraisal. The tension clear under his arrogance convinces Lavellan of his intent. Of course—Solas may be the Dread Wolf, destroyer of civilizations, but he is still _Solas_ with the same barely placable melancholies. She thinks of a gravestone in the Fade, “DYING ALONE” hewn in rock beneath his name.

“As your _significantly_ more powerful adversary, I once more dispossess you of those precious things. You are still one woman and I may as well be a god to you. I see that in the way you look at me.” Solas carries on his face a small grimace while he still speaks. He shakes his head. “You have said it yourself! If I wanted you dead, you would be dead. In awareness of this you despair over all your efforts’ futility. While I am distant you may imagine that you can fight effectively against me, and you convince yourself that you do quite impressively at hoarding secrets and chasing shadows. You feel now that those are fantasies that I allow you to entertain, games I permit you to play for my pleasure. And you do please me greatly.” The last part is likely meant by Solas to be threatening and condescending and perhaps in some way it is, but it is in some sense wonderfully soft. Lavellan sees that he really does wants her to come to his side and comfort him, so much that it aches. As much as she wants it she might hate him if he touches her but he will not touch her—not first. In some regards he is a very polite beast.

In others he is incredibly rude. A nervous speed builds in Solas’s voice as he lectures Lavellan on what he assumes are her own thoughts and feelings: “You grew used to power. Used to feeling like what you did mattered. Now you again face a monstrous enormity that you cannot even see the whole of. And you know that you are fighting blind. You are unaware of my plans and entirely without understanding of the magics I control. But you do know that your world will die and you along with it, and for your weakness and incapacity before me. How do you not fear me, and fear what I will do? Your pride suffers to admit to it, surely. I threaten not only your own life but the whole of your world, your way of thought, and your history! You cannot deny that in my presence! If I had designs against you, the most you could do to counter them was beg my mercy.”

Lavellan asks, “If I told you I feared you, would you like that?”

“No,” he says.

“You do have designs against me. So if I begged you—“

“—do not—“

“—don’t worry,” she almost laughs, “I don’t intend to beg you for anything, ever. You know I’m not afraid of you.”

Relief casts itself over Solas’s expression before he swallows it down, evidently very sour where it a moment ago was sweet. “Adahlen, you look upon your murderer,” he insists, guilt and shame choking and bruising his harsh whisper.

She so badly wants to kiss him just to spite him. Gently she taunts him, “The Breach and now the Conflux. You really don’t handle it well when something interrupts you playing god.”

“I am not a god, nor do I play at being one.” Solas sounds as if he is trying to convince Lavellan of the former point and himself of the latter.

“You spend all your time wandering around _mirrors_ yet you need to use me as one,” Lavellan accuses him with a prodding laugh. She turns her eyes upwards with a warming and self-satisfied smile and looks upon the mosaicked ceiling. A wolf in obsidian and gold looks down at her tangled in bright and intricate piecework vines. The entangled beast seems much more at peace than the wolf that has entrapped himself before her. Lavellan’s gaze falls back on Solas and he is watching her, his eyes on her exposed neck and the line of her jaw in a rapt anticipation. She takes a moment to find in the lamplight the pale constellation of freckles bridging Solas’s nose and high cheekbones. He wants to reach for her, she can tell. “You say I fear you because you remind me of my own helplessness. But it was you that grew complacent in your belief in your own power and agency. You grew used to knowing what you did mattered. And why would you not? In some sense, the world was yours. You were called a god. If you did not kill the greatest empire this continent has seen, you mortally wounded it. You altered the fabric of physicality and reality. This Conflux, whatever it is and wherever it comes from, challenges you. You don’t have control of this situation, a pride at the very center of your being is shaken. The same thing happened with the Breach, too, you know. You would have these little moods periodically where you would get all morose and pessimistic, fixated on doom and gloom and the end of days. On your own death.” Lavellan watches Solas as he had watched her, and from his rapt and tense regard she knows immediately that she had got it right. “And compulsively you’d come to me for comfort.”

A quiet settles between them. Solas raises a hand to cover his lips but by his cheeks and eyes he is hiding a smile. His shoulders heave in a deep, deep but silent laugh. Lavellan has touched on something and it delights him. Solas shakes his head and when he drops his hand, no traces of amusement remain upon his face. “I shouldn’t have ever allowed myself,” Solas says quietly. He needs her and he is ashamed. He should be. “Though I have permitted myself to derive comfort from your presence, I cannot ask—“

“—you’re doing it now!” Lavellan interjects. Solas’s eyes widen and he opens his mouth to speak again, but she cuts him off. Today he has condescended and abandoned her and lied and still she rushes to soothe him, “It’s all right. It’ll be all right. I know that it’s miserable to be revered—or reviled—as a god while in reality you feel powerless. You just want to share your vulnerability.” And in his terrible, arrogant way he had indeed found something shared between them: his fear and her madness are the same, springing from the same well held between them.

Sadly Solas says, “I already have asked too much of you.”

“You don’t need to put on airs of decency. You’re well past the point where you can do that,” she exhales. Within a short breath, Lavellan draws resolve that she will find what Solas is hiding from her and that he will not let him destroy the world—or destroy her. She will stop his ultimate plans and she will control the situation she finds herself in now. “When was the last time you touched another person?”

A frown flickers across Solas’s face as his posture reflexively changes to the defensive, falling back half a step and almost squaring his shoulders. “Excuse me?”

The reaction amuses the Inquisitor a little. Despite it all feels a little bad for Solas—he seems miserably uptight, especially for a mythical monster or god of misfortune. Poor baby. Lavellan repeats herself, “When was the last time you touched another person?”

“I heard the question,” Solas insists with a stifled roll of his eyes. “I just—“ he catches himself and pulls in a sharp breath before looking away. “This conversation is not going anywhere good.”

Lavellan responds to his little eye roll with a big one. “Ugh. As opposed to where it was going before,” she sighs. With this Lavellan spurs herself to take a familiar leap of faith: she pulls Solas towards her and kisses him. Their mouths meet, open, and she intends to pull away quickly but lingers, savoring the softness of his lips and the sweetness of his taste. He does not pull away and she forces herself to pull back, staying close and looking into his wide eyes. They are such a beautiful lavender grey, speckled with flecks of pale purple and white silver and his gaze wavers with a sickly and confused excitement as he takes in the moment. Solas draws a breath to speak and though he smiles it seems pained. Lavellan will not have that. She raises her right hand, almost shaking in excitement, to stroke his cheek. Still staring into his eyes, Lavellan murmurs for Solas, “You can be selfish. Right now I want you to be selfish.”

Solas almost at once kisses back, employing his hands to clasp his body to hers. It is as it had been from the beginning, Lavellan thinks as she opens her mouth to give his tongue access. He has made so much of a show of abstinence, of self-control, only to see it dissolve at the slightest touch from her. As they embrace Lavellan takes Solas’s right hand with hers and clumsily moves it atop her chest to the uppermost of the fastened buttons of her shirt—she’ll let it be clear where she intends this to go. He takes the initiative given and begins to undo them very quickly. Their kiss breaks when Lavellan leans back to give him access to the ones that had been pressed between their stomachs. Solas holds her to him by taking her bottom in hand and pressing her core to his and creating a fantastic friction between them as his hand trails down her belly working to get her free. When he gets the last of the buttons open he pulls her in again, he squeezes their stomachs and chests together again and his mouth travels to nip at her jaw and throat when she tilts back her head for him. His attentions evoke a quiet moan from Lavellan and her breathing begins to deepen as a smile spreads across her face. She had forgotten how much he bites.

He breaks from his task and separates from her, quickly stripping off his wolf jaw necklace to place it aside on his desk beside the dowsing mechanism. Almost immediately after he abandons his necklace he pulls off his shirt, which winds up on the floor. Solas turns to look over Lavellan who leans back against the bookshelves, her open blouse slipping off one of her shoulders. Under his gaze as well, Lavellan takes a moment to appreciate Solas’s body topless—he has lost some of his lean muscle definition since the last time she saw him bare, but just from his natural shape the mage is wonderfully built with solid shoulders and a wide chest that still model the characteristic grace of the elvish form. Lavellan makes eye contact with Solas and gives him a deliberately lecherous smile, at which he laughs aloud, fully and freely. She joins him in his laugh and swallows it when she bites her lip gently as her eyes follow the light trail of hair on his chest, reddish copper interspersed with grey, down his stomach and she grows resentful of his legging trousers, which pull tight over his thighs and elsewhere. Lavellan thinks that Solas might be too lovely to _not_ be a god. “Pretty boy,” she grins at him with spacey admiration, half teasingly but entirely earnestly. “Come here.”

Solas excitedly rejoins her, pulling her to him once he is near enough by reaching into her open shirt and tugging her by the bare small of her back. Lavellan’s stomach flutters as it suddenly abuts with Solas’s, flesh on flesh. He holds her there tight to him. She had to start this, but Solas seems intent to take the lead now that it has been instigated and for that Lavellan is thrilled. “If the world is to end there will be no better way to spend it than entangled with you,” Solas says before once again claiming her lips with his. It is short and shallow and he breifly nips at her bottom lip as he pulls away before resting forehead to forehead with her. “If you will have me I intend to lose myself entirely in you, for however briefly we can afford it.”

“However briefly we can afford it! Solas, you need this. Otherwise you’ll continue to devolve into a complete mess.” Lavellan explores Solas’s back with her hand, raking her fingers down along his spine. There’s a sensitive spot she remembers there and she deliberately traces around it before closing in. When she massages that place he arches into her and shivers against her. Lavellan giggles at Solas as she takes on his weight and wraps her truncated left arm around him as best she can.“There you are,” she mutters admiringly as his face screws up with the wash of pleasure. His teeth sink into his own bottom lip and he leans forward to press his head against her temple where he buries his face in her dark and thick hair. “It’s been like this as long as I’ve known you. But you’re far too proud to admit that thinking about death makes you _really_ want attention—even to yourself, probably.”

“It is a little ridiculous,” Solas admits with his lips pressed into her ear. The two elves take to making out like excited teenagers snuck away in a hollow in the woods. So much of Lavellan’s loathing for Solas sublimates away into pure physicality. The mage’s hands move up her waist to her rib cage and the touch, wavering and intent at once, almost burns. He runs his caresses further upward over her breasts and shoulders and pushes the open shirt down off her body onto the floor before turning his attentions to her brassiere which he is able to remove with ease.

Once her chest is free Solas takes a moment to look down admiringly at her body, his grey eyes pouring over her shoulders, collar bones, and lower down over her tits and stomach and the tattoos that mark them. Her body, like Solas’s, has lost some of its athleticism and, unlike Solas’s, has aged since he has last looked upon her. Despite this he seems pleased enough by what he sees. His hands return to her, one to take hold of her jaw and lead her into another kiss and the other to cup a breast. Lavellan hums into his lips as he strokes one of her rosy tan nipples with his thumb but she cannot really enjoy it—her mirth and excitement are displaced by a sudden rush of terror. What will happen when Solas stands back to look at her whole form and sees her stump arm bare? Lavellan has had sex in the years since she lost her hand, but she has always made sure to stay partially clothed for the act because she thinks that the appendage is rather ugly. She had let herself get too caught up to notice—involuntarily she begins to draw back from their kiss.

Just as quickly as her discomfort peaks it is itself displaced by Solas seizing her in his arms, wrapping them around her. Their torsos now entirely unclothed, they rest chest to chest and Lavellan is overtaken by the warmth encompassing her. Lavellan buries her face in the bent of Solas’s neck and squeezes herself to him. He holds her and she has time to feel and smell him as she presses kisses along his shoulder: this is happening. She takes in the sensation of his skin on hers and inhales deeply. Solas smells faintly like smoke and parchment, familiar but so long lost. With her still clasped to his chest he begins to run his hands over her body, giving attention to her shoulders, back, and arms. One of his hands travels down her left arm and the insecurity over what is missing returns to her mind returns but dissolves as he caresses her elbow down to the end of the limb where it rests at his waist. He quietly and a little guiltily asks her if she’s comfortable with him touching and she nods to him, forcing a giggle that becomes real as her right hand emulates his ministrations in stroking his body. “I really wish I had two hands to hold you with.” His skin is soft and hot to the touch and though they fall still Lavellan is so exhilarated.

Lavellan listens to Solas’s heart beat with her pointed ear pressed against his neck. His voice drowns out the gentle thumps: “It had been six years since I touched another person. I have needed this for so long,” he says, “but right now more than ever. I am so glad you are here.”

Six years ago he left her behind at the eluvian: it seems a tacit admission that their kiss had been his last interpersonal physical content. It comes to her that he had intended to destroy his personhood and depart on a path of death with that being the case. Solas is so terrible, so completely fucking terrible, but he’s hers and she loves him. “It’s all right,” Lavellan reassures him as she nuzzles his skin. She feels his head sink on to her shoulder and she presses kisses into his neck and almost cries in happiness when he tightens his hug. “It’s all going to be all right. We’re going to figure it out.”

Solas gives an appreciative laugh. With a quiet sigh, he ventures, “If this is your tried and true method of addressing my distress, I never before noticed.” He seems embarassed when he adds, “You have told me that I need not be grim and fatalistic to get you into bed, but it seems to do the job well.”

Lavellan beams at him and teases, “You _don’t_ need to be grim and fatalistic to get me into bed. But when you’re being grim and fatalistic, you _need_ to get me into bed.” They sway together until Lavellan initiates another kiss.

Solas pins her to the bookshelf by her left elbow and right wrist at some point during the embrace. His hold on her is firm and when she struggles playfully against the grip an excited knot begins to tighten inside her, rubbing and pulling in on itself. At one point she would have easily had the strength to free herself from him but she no longer does, and he responds to her attempts to wrestle free by leaning into her further to hold her in place. Even when he is being forceful, his lips are pillowy soft until he intersperses bites in his caress. He inflicts these little points of pain that he then sucks at and nurses gently while they are tender. Lavellan begins to respond by nipping back, harder and faster and from his frenzied response and the pressure growing against her leg she can tell Solas likes that. She engages him in a longer, lingering lip-lock while she tries to tug her hand from his grasp to free his cock from his pants but he refuses to let her go. His lips still against hers, Solas mutters, “You speak of my needs and accuse me of being selfish, and I am. But I am not the only one indulging his desires. As deeply as you might love me, you take a perverse delight in watching me fall to ruin. You know each kiss we share tortures me in near equal measure as it grants me reprieve and you savor that as you find it on your lips.” Solas stares into Lavellan’s eyes as he keeps her pinned there. “I could not bear to have you if you did not want me as disastrously as I want you. You are so perfect to me.”

With his body pressed up against hers she can feel the tightness in his muscles and the stiffness in his posture. Lavellan says, “Oh, you’re so tense. I can’t believe you still get wound up like this.”

“I have not in a good while.”

“Because you’ve been in control.” She wants him to strip their last garments off and take her, to expend every twitch of his nervous energy pounding into her body. She wants him to dominate her only to watch him in his passions lose his hand on himself and on her and become soft and malleable like clay for her to shape. Lavellan feels his erection through his pants and wants Solas buried inside of her immediately. Her mind swims with reveries of his hard cock and firm ass and again wishes desperately she had two hands to feel him with.

“In a manner of speaking,” Solas says, resting his temple against hers for a lull in their entanglement. “There are still…some things on my mind. For instance, I am an utter fool for you but not such a fool that I think you have done this just for my companionship—though that is a side benefit you, likely begrudgingly, enjoy. What did you think you would get from encouraging this?”

Lavellan hums, far too delirious to think of a clever quip to return: “A leg up, maybe?”

“Ah!” Solas exclaims. With that, he drops her left elbow to take hold of that knee and hoists it to his waist, causing her to fall back against the bookshelf slightly. She shudders as his hand slides up her leg, his forearm supporting it and lifting it higher and wider while his hand comes to rest on her behind. Her knee is hooked around his elbow and she feels like she might topple over but he presses himself into her and her into the bookshelf to hold her in place. She gasps in heated pleasure when he begins to grind against her, his stiff cock rubbing the mound between her splayed legs through their remaining clothing. “Like this?”

“Dork,” she accuses through her own rising arousal, though it’s difficult to taunt him while he is making her moan and forcing her to balance on one leg that threatens to twitch and collapse. Maybe she had wanted to manipulate him. Maybe she really had wanted to help him. She doesn’t really know. Lavellan feels her leg spasm and go out from under her but she does not fall. She hardly regards the magic that holds her in place as Solas drops her other hand to free his own to push her other knee up and back, spreading her out for him. Their hips move together as he presses his core into hers, emulating the motions of intercourse with a tremendous pressure against her. With the rising friction between them a warm tension blooms in Lavellan and she flushes and gasps as she shakes and squirms, her hand spasming where it is braced against his chest. She clenches her eyes shut and curls her toes as the heat and wetness inside of her builds while she listens delightedly to his own deepened breathing. She opens her legs as wide as she can to give him better access and she would be furious that they both still are in pants if she could think well enough.

When Solas stops, Lavellan makes a disappointed noise and he laughs at her. Knowing him he’ll continue to tease her until she has to take back what she had promised about begging—unless she can provoke him into losing his plans and composure first. Through the fantastic strain built within her, Lavellan exhales in joyous frustration, “Would you believe me if I told you I didn’t really have any plans for this going forward?”

“Typically my answer would be no, but earlier today I watched a whim send you jumping off a roof,” Solas says with a dry bemusement. He gives Lavellan a peck on her lips and his eyes flicker down to the aching nexus where their bodies are still pressed together with only their trousers between them. Slowly Solas leans his forehead to touch hers and looks in her eyes. Almost he whispers, “Tell me what you want of me.”

Lavellan knows precisely what Solas needs her to answer. “I want you to fuck me.”

“Until neither of us knows anything beyond the other,” he promises to her and, knowing but not caring that it is a terrible idea, they tangle together again.

* * *

  
The ending is slow and lazy to perhaps the most desperate and needy sex Lavellan has ever experienced. The two elves had twisted their bodies to couple in a number of ways in a number of places through the apartments but they had wound up face to face in bed. Solas presses Lavellan into the sheets with the weight of his body from his position between her widely splayed legs and both of them are loose and hot as they breathe heavily, damp with their intermingled perspiration.

Solas tremors slightly through a few languid strokes of recovery and what remains of Lavellan’s left arm is wrapped about his shoulders to the best of its ability. Her feet, thrown up in the air, twitch and her right hand runs over his body as he hunches over her, his cock still plugging her stretched and soaked cunt. His face is still a bit drawn and he gives audible little gasps in the tender aftermath of his finish. With a wavering hand she pets his side, which softly undulates between her splayed and bent back thighs. Spent and satisfied, they tremble together.

Their lips brush and their hips roll together, hardly separating now as their bellies smush together. They are so close together, him having sunk down to rest on his elbows over her, his hands free to stroke and cup her face as they kiss. They share the sensation of the tiny residual shivers from her prior climaxes around him and they move sensitive and slow, shuddering and wincing lightly in the slick heat between them. Their lazy embrace makes wet squishing noises with each little motion of their hips winding down. They are one thing, one perfect, blessed, silly, sprawling being, Lavellan thinks and Solas must think it too.

As their heavy breathing begins to abate Solas knots his fingers in Lavellan’s dark waves of hair and lightly tugs her head back to very gently and tiredly bite and kiss at her neck and jawline, which she cedes to him lazily. His movement within her grinds almost entirely to a halt. His lips leave a wet, cool trail on her heated skin and she wiggles against him, muttering something resembling his name. In Elvish between his breaths he tells her she is so good, that she feels so good around him. Half in his ancient tongue and half in Common she says he makes her feel so good. None of it is particularly eloquent or coherent, but their fragmented interchange is airy and giggly as they give up trying to communicate with words and just inhale and exhale in time as if they were one.

Their cores remain pressed together and though Solas has begun to soften and shrink slightly, Lavellan still feels wonderfully full with his cock and his cum inside of her. Lavellan is pinned between Solas and the bed and she is entirely inundated with him. So what if he will be her murderer?—she doesn’t understand what it means anymore, just that it is monstrous and fitting, as Solas is her whole world and part of her. He is her everything, certainly right now and perhaps always. He might even be her god. They are covered in each other’s sweat and spit and other fluids and stare at each other dumbly and amazedly.

The moment of oneness washes away and they both fall back a bit, the tension holding their bodies entwined ebbing away. Lavellan lets her arms fall back onto the pillows above her head and Solas first involuntarily partially and then deliberately fully withdraws from her. The sensation evokes a little moan from her throat.

Solas is on his knees between Lavellan’s still spread legs and he looks down upon her as he straightens his body. She peers back in kind and thinks about how beautiful he is.  She lets down her thighs and they rest over his and she looks over at where their skin, his porcelain and her fawn, abuts flesh again on flesh. Even now after so much contact Lavellan is desperate to touch Solas more: propped up the best she can on her left arm she reaches to Solas with her right hand to pet his chest and rib cage as he hums in soft and amazed appreciation. He rests his hands on her thighs, light and gentle, and just looks at her. As the sound of the surf outside and the chilled air that came on the heels of the rain washes back in to Lavellan’s world, she thinks of the white cliffs of chalk beachheads with weathered and cracking brown vines and roots holding tight to the ancient rock. Her fingers move to run over his stomach down along the ridge of his hipbone and follow his thigh as he lifts himself out from between her legs and rolls to his side to lay next to her.

Solas sprawls onto the sheets with a sanguine smile and stares toward the ceiling. The mosaic above them in the bedroom depicts the night sky, the tiles mimicking the shapes of constellations, and the gold and silver pieces used for stars glimmer with the dimmed light of the bedroom lamps. He stretches and lifts an arm to lay it across the pillow, inviting Lavellan to slip into the space under his arm. When she takes the initiative he lifts the arm to embrace her and hold her to him. The gesture almost feels protective—despite everything. He turns his head to kiss her cheeks and forehead with gentle, almost chaste pecks. For a moment she fears she sees sadness in his eyes but the odd aspect vanishes as soon as it had arisen. He sighs, still beaming, and he closes his eyes in satisfaction as Lavellan’s right hand runs circles on his chest. Solas is happy, so happy, and Lavellan loves him and feels so loved, so special.

Even if Solas is a liar and a monster Lavellan will save him so he can smile like this again. He’s killed millions, she knows, but she will not let him do it again. Maybe he doesn’t deserve it, but maybe she’s doing it for herself. She is after all, very selfish. She truly does adore him and wants him for herself forever. Here in her arms Solas seems much less a god and much more a man: Lavellan thinks back to the more visceral aspects of their union, of his cries and shudders and the spasms of the muscles in his back. She imagines that the Maker’s love for Andraste had far more to do with the transcendence of the song she sang than it did where she put her fingers—what fondness would a god, immortal, eternal, and all-powerful have for sex? Solas briefly rouses from his repose and disturbs Lavellan, who has set to idly counting the grey hairs she can find on her lover’s chest, from hers to pull the covers of the bed up to their waists to capture the warmth of their bodies away from the outside storm’s new gathering cold. Between them it is wonderfully comfortable as they wind around one another, not thinking of anything beyond the physical moment.

“I think you forgot how to speak Common at some point,” Lavellan says finally and fondly.

“I did?” Solas asks beside her on the pillow, his soft lips pursing into a little frown that dissolves in an abashed laugh. “I hadn’t noticed. That is…a little embarrassing.”

“It was endearing.” Lavellan caresses Solas’s thigh beneath the covers and evokes happy little hums from him. If he is a malevolent deity he is a very precious one, she thinks when he turns further on his side so he can kiss her on the tip of her crooked nose.

Lavellan looks out the big bay window to watch the drizzle fall over the ocean. She realizes that it is likely she is going to be sore the next day. Solas had been absolutely committed to fucking her mindless even before she had gone out of her way to tease and provoke him into especial roughness—being called “Dread Wolf” during sex, Lavellan discovered, is something Solas either hates so greatly that some part of him loves it, or he loves so greatly that some part of him hates it. It might be a little of both. She thinks about how ridiculous it is that she and Solas (two commandants locked in a battle for the fate of the world, now maybe facing down death from beyond!) had spent the whole day miserable in large part because they were desperate to smash their bodies against one another. As Lavellan reminisces on sweet and giddy things the clouds cast their great grey shadows on the waves and the soft rainfall meeting the water gives the unending expanse an almost fuzzy aura. The weather may be bad, but it is the sort of bad that is entirely pleasant when one is curled up in bed warm and dry in the arms of a lover. As they settle into the coziness Lavellan’s thoughts congeal into a question: “Solas, how old are you?”

“Hm?” Solas frowns at the question and he turns over on his back to think. He scratches his jaw and his stomach above where the covers fall as his brow furrows. “I am—wait, no. About—ah. ...no.”

“You don’t know how old you are.” Lavellan gives a laugh of disbelief. “Really?”

“In a sense I do!” a perturbed and indignant Solas insists but he seems to catch himself on something and his petulance blooms into a warm chuckle. It feels like old times a little, before Solas had left and before Lavellan had found him again. Solas actually begins to seem excited he explains, “Unfortunately, that sense is not one that is easy to articulate. You have asked a very difficult question to answer. Time has not always been measured as it is now, nor has it passed in the manner that it does.”

“Before the empire of Elvhenan?” Lavellan asks. She lays her right hand on Solas’s bare stomach, cuddling up with him to listen.

“Well before,” Solas confirms.

She has become interested and almost forgets about her disappointment in not hearing a number from him: “What do you mean that time passed differently?”

“Honestly it may have just been a matter of perception,” Solas says but he seems unhappy with that himself. He removes his arm from around her to cross both of his over his chest, and then to tap a hand on his mouth and chin as his brow furrows in thought. To continue the closeness Lavellan wraps her truncated left arm under him to take him in her grasp. “Forgive my silence,” he says after a while, laying one of his hands on top of hers on his stomach. He squeezes it with great affection. “If I cannot answer your question satisfactorily, I would at least like to explain why I cannot. Yet even that is difficult to explain, and even somewhat difficult to conceptualize for myself. I know well what I recall and what I understood about my world, but as the world has changed, so have I.”

“When you were in the ruined library you likely saw memories and records of Elvhenan, where the Fade and the physical world came together as one. It must have seemed so strange and fluid to you—but the time of Elvhenan was almost concrete compared to the unending shifting and tumbling of the world I was born into.” Solas laughs suddenly as if some thought has dawned on him. “So you are aware. Like you or any other elf I once had a mother and a father, and came about in flesh and blood at my inception. In that era there was hardly a sense of time—just a knowing of what you had been present for and what you could not see.”

“But it changed?”

“Yes. We willed it to change. A number of us desired distinct identities, permanence of self, and a greater ability to understand—or perhaps just predict—the world. With that will we tore the physical component from the spiritual, creating two distinct but interlocked components of being. We did not change truly in nature or at all relative to the rest of the world, but the impact was immense. We were able to attain a magnificence before unknown by allowing the world to exist as both concrete and ephemeral at once. Our action lead to the Lost War in which ancient and forgotten things protested the new world and the fledgling Empire that would come to rule it,” Solas explains. As she listens Lavellan idly thinks back to his memory where he stood before a shifting hall of hollow and clamoring voices: forgotten things. She doesn’t dwell on them long. Solas is elaborating on history and magical theory and Lavellan is reminded of the days in which she had originally come to love him. “The way in which we experienced our surroundings changed entirely. What memories I have from before are poorly represented by how I might interpret them now. The idea of what a year was—“ he stops talking abruptly and again laughs at himself. Wistfully he interrupts himself. “You have always listened to me go on. I appreciate that. But to simply answer your question, it suffices to say that I am _very_ old.”

Lavellan looks at the man she is sprawled out next to with an almost childish wonderment. How can they be the same sort of thing if he is ancient, if he had experienced time before there was time? She has asked these questions to herself before but never in his presence. She can hardly believe that he loves her, and not for the usual reasons concerning his conduct. Maybe Solas really might as well be a god—or at least fundamentally different from her for all his years and knowledge. She catches the ceiling’s mosaic in her periphery and has a thought. It seems silly of her to ask but Lavellan does it anyways: “Are you older than the stars?”

“Many of them, yes, but not all,” Solas responds and the answer relieves Lavellan. He had been born into an extant world—different in quality, but the same one she lived in now. Some of the same stars that have watched down over her own life and deeds had borne witness to his inception. Solas continues, “For what my assurances are worth, I am the same manner of being as you. Despite my age, experience, and arcane ability, I am a mortal and material man. If there is some fate that controls this world, some force that compels your actions and mine, it is as untenable and mysterious to me as it is to you—and perhaps for my hubris even more terrifying.”

Lavellan runs her hand on Solas’s stomach in little circles and watches as his gaze grows distant and his small and soft smile slips away. Quiet falls apart from the patter of the rain on the window and on the balcony. The two of them are still attempting to navigate a crisis, Lavellan remembers. Rationally Lavellan knows she should not trust Solas, that he is trying to destroy her world and may be deceiving her. She knows for certain that he is keeping information from her and had spent her whole day wracked with hate for him—she cannot have allowed him to have fucked the good sense out of her. But she is stupid enamored with him and is willing to believe he is genuinely bothered by the Conflux. For the moment, that is enough for her to try and work with him in peace. “I did mean it when I said we would figure this all out.” She is in part trying to convince herself.

“I believe you. This was a needed reprieve, but we cannot hide away in one another for too long.” Solas closes his eyes and gives a small sigh that is at once somehow both contented and disappointed. “Fortunately to work we need not leave this bed. If the dowsing mechanism detects the orb or someone connects to your sending crystal, there will be a sound and it will wake us. Come dream with me—I have something to show you.”

The two elves intertwine and they drift away from consciousness towards the realm of sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I said chapters would take longer to post, I didn’t mean THIS long. Like, wow, it’s been a month.
> 
> I re-wrote this chapter about three times and I still don’t like it but I kind of just had to release it to get it done with. Maybe I’ll edit it later, I don’t know. The pacing of this stuff is always weird to me and that’s how I always end up skipping writing actual intercourse, oops.
> 
> I hope I’ll be able to post every week or two—I’m in my last semester of school (hopefully ever), am taking a full course load, working part time, and trying to have at least a bit of a social life so I feel like I’ll definitely be doing a lot of procrastination writing/editing.


	9. The Beautiful People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While their investigation into the crimes at Clattering Keep rests at an impasse, Solas takes Lavellan to dream in the Fade where they can see and discuss his memories of the Conflux.
> 
> Their exploration, however, does not limit itself to memories of mysterious artifacts. Lavellan learns of the cruel and flippant politics of Elvhenan, discovers an alliance between the Dread Wolf and Dirthamen, and confirms her suspicions about her ex-boyfriend’s natural hair color.

Lavellan becomes conscious in the Fade and immediately realizes that she once again is in the possession of a left hand. Sometimes she has it back when she dreams unaccompanied, but she never notices it—not like this. It feels real as if it is made of flesh and blood and not wisps of memory.

The next thing that draws the Inquisitor’s attention is the chamber to which the Fade has brought her. She wanders out further into the great hall as she takes in her surroundings. It is expansive and might fit thousands in its tiered galleries and mezzanines stacked one atop the other above. At a distance at the end of the hall on a dais there is a throne draped in dark fur and behind it a stained glass window reaches up to the ceiling. An opaque glass black wolf stands behind the throne, multicolored light pouring in through the brightly translucent shards behind it. The canid howls to the sky and behind it in brilliant red a dragon is caught in its rise unfurling its great wingspan for all the world to see. Lavellan calculates that the room might fit an audience of several thousand if full. The great hall is flanked by statutes of wolves and the walls are adorned with frescoed paintings of dramas played out between between hooded elves and beasts with innumerable eyes. The colors in the paint are at once earthy and vibrant and Lavellan recognizes the pallet as being similar to that used in the mural Solas had painted in the atrium where he studied.

Solas’s voice comes from behind her: “I brought you to the Fade to show you some of my memories of the Conflux so you might better understand my perspective on our situation. Where we are now is not relevant to our mission but since we find ourselves waiting with little to do, I thought I might bring you here.”

She has never been in the room, but she knows where she is. In some sense, she is home: even in the Fade’s facsimile of a building long lost to time and replaced a dozen times over, she can feel the subtle magics characteristic of the place. “This is Skyhold,” she says, looking up at the vaulted cathedral-style ceiling that sports darkly scintillating geometric mosaics. Great metal chandeliers hosting bright orbs of light that cast a fiery golden glow throughout the room hang down. The hall that hosts the Inquisition’s assemblies and court is magnificent, but it seems paltry and dull compared to the structure that had previously occupied its site. Solas had told her he was a minor deity before legend had upgraded him to a full member of the pantheon and this seems like an appropriate seat of power for one called a god.

Solas doesn’t respond to her observation for a long moment. “Oh. Hm,” she hears him mutter. Something has distracted him. Lavellan turns to see that he is not at her side, gone to a mirror in an enclave off to the side of the hall. In the little recess, he leans towards the looking glass and touches his chin and cheek in a careful assessment of his own features. When he straightens up to look at her, he asks, “My appearance. Is it different from in the waking world to you as well?” Solas tilts his head very slightly and a long strand of copper-colored hair comes loose from where it is tethered in a half-bun to fall in his face. Lavellan answers him by using her hand (her left—she’ll make happy use of it while she can) to brush the errant lock aside. With great care so as not to tangle it in an earring, she tucks it behind Solas’s ear. A smile that seems almost embarrassed creeps on to his face. “Ah. So the answer is ‘yes’ then.” A trickle of diffidence drips into his voice as he explains, “I suppose the memories—both my own and those of others—I drew upon to construct this place must have contained recollections of my person and imposed those upon its projection here.”

If Lavellan had harbored any doubt that the visitor to the forgotten court in her earlier dream had been a younger version of Solas, that doubt is now dissipated. He is certainly wearing a similar amount of jewelry to the visitor: atop fine robes of grey and red his wolf’s jaw is hung around his neck with a cord of leather and gold chain twisted together, the blades of his pointed ears sport several earrings including large hoops with a fang hanging in the center of each, and on his hands he wears a number of bright rings. Solas now looks to be younger than Lavellan by perhaps a decade. Gone from his face are his laugh lines and the heavy droop in his eyelids, and so is a certain gauntness imparted by aging and the shadow of stress and misery. His face seems a more fitting home for the dimple on his chin and his full and soft lips, two sweet and gentle features that had contrasted with the weathered austerity of his visage. She wants to ask him what had happened so that his body had aged, but cannot find a way to approach the question and instead chooses to stay light-hearted and soft. Solas still wants and needs his attention, Lavellan tells herself.

“I guess I’ve always known you were a redhead,” Lavellan teases, “I just hadn’t accepted it.” Knowing what she must want, Solas bows his head to her shoulder so she can run her fingers through his long, straight locks. He lets her pull out the messily tied half-bun so she has free reign to tangle her hands in his hair entirely.

Solas feigns mild offense. “I had always heard my hair described as auburn.” He hums with pleasure as she scratches and massages his scalp with both hands, but has the nerve to suggest, “You seem to be enjoying yourself.”

“Are you trying to get me to say something incredibly shallow?” Lavellan jokes. The man she holds now in her arms has the sort of beauty immediately noticeable: his bright copper-red hair served well to draw attention that his face and form bid to stay. When Lavellan had first met Solas it had taken her several days to realize how attracted she was to him. Those early times at Haven had been hectic and Lavellan hardly had time to eat or sleep—let alone hunt down and stare at a reserved middle aged mage, even if that reserved middle aged mage had saved her life. Solas did not call attention to himself. He was quiet, wore neutral colors, and often donned a cowl. Without his staff, there was hardly anything about him to draw one’s eye to him. As an apostate with an uncertain fate with the Inquisition Solas had cultivated this deliberately and had been very content to blend into the backdrop. Yet at some point Lavellan left a conversation with the hedge mage with a spring in her step, butterflies in her stomach, and the realization that not only was Solas wonderfully strange and brilliant, but also absolutely lovely.

Solas kids back, “And here I thought you had a preference for more mature suitors.” Lavellan is certain he knows—but hardly cares—that even old and bald he is very pleasing to look upon. She remembers again Haven when she had first been trying to cajole Solas into bed. He had received her advances so calmly and in such a steady manner, slow and reserved even when expressing clearly that he harbored great attraction to her. In the past she had spent many evenings with woodland rangers and lone homesteaders she had come across while wandering away from the Dalish camps, and even those with some sort of swagger had been eager and almost excitable not only over the prospect of sex but over that of interpersonal attention. Solas had been intractably demure in the face of the young Herald’s evidently wanted flirtation and Lavellan had found his confidence and nonchalance not only intoxicating but curiously atypical. She supposes it makes sense now: as a beautiful demigod Solas must have been subject to a constant onslaught of seductions over thousands of years. One person’s propositions are easily taken in stride.

“You’re still an old man.” Lavellan gives a great, silly sigh as she removes her fingers from Solas’s hair and separates from him to look him square in the face. Lavellan thinks for a moment that she is very glad that she found him only once he was older: she would have been too intimidated to attempt to woo him otherwise. (She doesn’t question whether or not it would have been better for her to have avoided the romantic nature of their relationship.) It only takes Lavellan a moment to realize that is probably not true that she would have been scared off. At the age she was when she first met Solas, she would have taken it as a challenge to get a single evening or a quick sojourn to a shady thicket out of the copper-haired mage, and that probably wouldn’t have been especially difficult. Even pretty men are men, and men tend to be rather easy. It is Lavellan’s turn to affect fake pouts: “I think I might just be cursed to find you stupidly gorgeous however you appear to me.”

“I am flattered that you think I make a handsome wolf.” Despite the odd venue and his changed appearance, in some part the saccharine prodding makes their rapport feel like it did so long ago. Solas clears his throat as if he is about to announce something terrible. “If I may ask a favor of you. It is perhaps wrong of me to request, but—” he shakes his head quickly as if he is attempting to waive bad thoughts away, “—but oftentimes I am a fool who will not help himself. You bear your vallaslin neither in worship of false gods nor of nostalgia for a place you never knew, but as means to show the world you are not ashamed for who you are or where you came from. I understand why you declined my offer to remove the blood writing and it is a choice that I respect. Despite this...It is selfish of me, but just between the two of us, while I look on you—“

“—yes.” Her voice comes more quietly than she expects.

“—I would like to see you free,” Solas finishes through her barely audible whisper.

She repeats her assent, her voice wavering lightly. “I would like that. Just here between the two of us.” Her head swims with knotting and twisting thoughts. She knows now the context he saw her tattoos in that made him want them gone. They are the marks of slavery and in that they are in some sense truly loathsome. She furthermore has spent the last few minutes ogling Solas as a young man and she thinks that it is only fair that he should have her how he wants. At the same time, there is an implacable anger in her that leaves her fixated on him as he rests a hand on her forehead and brushes a wave of her hair back as another finger runs along her cheekbone. Solas is breathless as he looks upon her, his fingers still to gently holding her in place. Lavellan’s odd anger begins to shrink and wilt away with a bubbling wonderment. Solas must have laid his eyes upon countless magnificent and incredible things in his thousands of years, yet he looks at her as if her unmarked face with its crooked nose is the most amazing thing he has ever seen. She feels her knees grow weak and they kiss like newlyweds. She can feel how much he adores her and it hurts in the most fantastic way.

Solas guides Lavellan to spin around and when she looks upon herself in the mirror the blood writing that had marked her face for two decades is gone. It is only in illusion and she had never felt free or happy amongst the Dalish but she finds some part of herself mourning the vallaslin. Lavellan’s thoughts do not linger there for long as Solas wraps his arms around her from behind. His hoop earring lightly taps up against her cheek as he stares over her shoulder at the two of them together in the mirror. There is a deeply plaintive look in Solas’s eyes. Lavellan no longer focuses on her face or his and takes in the whole of the image before her. When they are still, the reflection serves as a sort of portrait—at once haunting and halcyon—of a forlorn fantasy.

“In another world?” Lavellan feels Solas tighten his grip on her and he rests his forehead to her temple, losing sight of their reflection to bury his face in her hair. She remembers the sweet peace between them is temporary, artificial, and built of crisis and panic, and that soon again they will find themselves at odds.

“In another world,” Solas echoes. He kisses her head softly, his voice is an absent whisper. The two stand there for a minute more, looking at nothing but one another despite the splendor that surrounds them. At long last Solas untangles from her, and takes some steps around her towards the mirror. He takes her hand in his own. “My apologies. I have dallied enough by bringing you to this place solely to sate my own nostalgia when I am supposed to be giving you information. Come, there are things to see elsewhere.”

* * *

 

The two emerge from a mirror set into wood. In her periphery, Lavellan sees that the surface is not the smoothed wooden paneling lining the interior of a library or apartment in a manor, nor is it the rough boards of a one room cottage’s wall—it is unrefined and sports grooved bark that is expansive and uninterrupted. She turns fully and her eyes are drawn up—above her loom branches as wide as rivers and seemingly as long, their twisting forks and offshoots shading the platform from the sun. She thinks she must be at the base of a truly massive tree for one moment before she spins again to look down over a cascade of descending terraces to see that the structure she now stands upon is supported in the junction of two giant branches, and beyond the platforms’ borders there is nothing but air. Nothing but air and a vast forest made up of trees as large and perhaps even larger than the one that holds her now. The scale is unimaginable and Lavellan is entranced and bewildered by it.

The platform on which she and Solas stand is the uppermost of a series of terraces playing host a great garden. Lush plants, including a number of more familiar-sized trees, spill from the decks below, and in courtyards amidst a multi-leveled maze of hedges rest a number of bright-colored tents, several glimmering gold structures, manicured lawns, and dazzling fountains. Lavellan’s bare feet tread across the marble flooring as she sweeps without words over to the edge of the platform. When she closes the distance she looks down over the railing. Though there are a number of decks protruding not far beneath the one where she stands, vertigo hits her and she grips the railing. The ground is impossibly far from her and she begins to feel dizzy as she notices that she looks down over the tufts of an errant and low-riding cloud. Other terraces and what look like grand estates as big or bigger than chateaus hang from and poke out of the surrounding trees below and and above her, and she tries to use the features of these structures to get some sense of scale. She thinks she must be half a mile in the sky.

Solas’s hand falls on Lavellan’s where it rests atop the white stone rail when he joins her at the terrace’s balustrade. He looks to be savoring the overwhelmed expression plastered across her face. As tender and admiring as his watchful regard is she refuses to give him the satisfaction of seeing her awestruck by his world.

“You don’t need to worry, Solas,” Lavellan says, forcibly injecting a wry note into her speech, “I’m not about to jump over the railing.”

Solas gives a quiet chuckle and with his free hand angles Lavellan’s face so he can kiss her. His lips press to hers only breifly and when he pulls back his eyes linger on her unmarked face before he springs to motion, pulling her by her waist away from the ledge back towards the direction of the mirror. Solas really is handsy in the Fade, Lavellan thinks as his grip dips slightly lower with a soft squeeze. Trailed by her involuntary giggles she follows after him past the egress, and as they near the other boundary of the platform he breaks his silence. “Look up,” Solas tells Lavellan, “through the opening in the canopy.”

“That’s not—“ Visible through the hole in the trees’ cover, distant peaks of crystal superstructures span the mouth of the opening and stretch up into the heavens, looming higher than any of the trees in the monstrous forest they look upon it from. In slow and subtle turn what can be seen of the city vista wanes prismatic in the light of the late afternoon. Lavellan forgets her resolve to not show Solas her amazement and she stares, riveted, wide-eyed and agape, out onto the skyline of Arlathan. “It’s beautiful,” she finally says. Her voice comes in a whisper.

“This place is built of impressions. Memories and dreams play host to hyperbole and embellishment—what you see in the Fade can never be taken as wholly representative of any sort of truth or reality. That being said, I do think this closely resembles what once was.” Solas pauses and gives another little laugh. “I suppose my own recollection, though, is just as susceptible to exaggeration as that of any other.”

The Inquisitor gazes out upon the monumental spires. Though she knows them to be an image in a dream, they seem just as real as any city whose walls and monuments can be seen sitting upon the horizon. How could something so massive simply vanish? She has been underground to giant dwarven superstructures forgotten by the extant but dying empire. Those ancient ruins had been as a skeleton on which the past could be projected—physical spaces that once held living people and things. Arlathan has left no such remnants behind. The husks plundered by Tevinter at the site of the ancient city could not possibly have held what she sees now. Lavellan does not understand: “And all that, and all of this…it’s just gone.”

Solas takes a while to answer, and when he does it is in sad and in odd metaphor: “There is a fable that farmers tell their children in which piglets build their homes only to have a wolf come along and knock them in. With only his breath the monster would condemn the little houses and have them scattered to the wind.”

It is not an Elvish tale, but Lavellan has heard it. There are children of staff and servants in and around Skyhold now. When Cole and Maryden visit the castle they tell the wiggling and chattering gaggles stories and lead them in song. More than once in spaces between meetings, Lavellan has found herself watching from not too closely nearby, listening over the yarn being spun and the kids’ enrapt reactions. Seeing children is always a bittersweet thing for her and idly her thoughts float to the reflection of her and Solas together in the mirror, but does not allow the two ideas to connect in her thoughts. What useless and despondent flight of fancy that would be. Almost emptily and without turning to look at the man beside her, Lavellan suggests, “The lost houses were huts of straw and sticks, not spires of crystal.”

“Those things are not as different as you might first believe,” Solas warns. As she regards the city still, Lavellan remembers the crumbling library and the memories of the panicked screams of its inhabitants as it fell to pieces with the erecting of the Veil. How powerful, she wonders, was the magic that held Elvhenan intact?

Finally Lavellan turns to Solas. He stares at the beautiful city, his gaze wavering and forlorn. “Do you ever regret your rebellion?”

“No,” Solas says without a moment of hesitation. His sadness is overcome by resolution. “Not at all. I would do it again.”

Solas had been willing to risk an entire civilization on the premise that not all its people were free. It is wonderful and admirable and utterly ruined by the fact that to resurrect it he will destroy another world—another world that is not even his as this one was. The cityscape seems sharp, decadent, and cold as Lavellan is overcome by hate for it. What a sickening place she now stands in. The warm and heavy air at their high elevation now is overripe and unnatural. Through her pain and confusion she slips around Solas, who is still captivated by nostalgia, and instead of tearing him to pieces she wraps her arms around his waist from behind to fold him in a hug. She squeezes him as if having him close will fill the gaping hole opening inside his chest. Solas’s body is warm even in the Fade and Lavellan imagines that she might keep him back from his worst designs if she can just hold him in her arms. As he stares out at the city he places his hands upon hers where they rest on her stomach and they stand still together.

When at long last Solas moves away from Lavellan, he looks like a man who has found himself adrift in fantasy and has had to moor himself before losing himself further. He at once looks to have swallowed something bitter and smiles a lonely smile left residual by his reveries. Lavellan can imagine a number of places his mind might go and all of them make her hurt. Solas releases the last remnants of his thoughts and says softly, “We keep getting waylaid. This way.”

Side by side they descend the white marble staircase onto a lower terrace. “What am I here to see?” Lavellan asks as Solas ushers her into a maze with topiary walls.

They enter through an archway supporting bright flowering climbing vines into the verdant labyrinth. Solas explains, “What I told you in your bedroom about the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the orb—Much of it was simplified. At the time I was in a hurry and now I am able to tell you more.”

“Is the information important?” Lavellan asks as she follows along. Solas seems like he knows where he is going.

“Perhaps,” Solas says. “I…enjoy sharing things with you. Things about myself. Things that are part of myself, like memories. I wish that things were different so I could give you my whole self.”

She is unsure of what accepting his whole self once it was rendered unto her entails. Solas’s whole self is ancient and perhaps monstrous and Lavellan would have and hold it all the same, even if it might destroy her. She doesn’t say this and instead asks, “What’s in this memory?”

“This memory contains a conversation between two of the Evanuris, Andruil and Dirthamen, and myself. The Secret-Keeper and I had called a meeting with the Huntress. Nominally we called to discuss a conflict that threatened the peace in Elvhenan, but we intended to confront her about her possession of the Conflux,” Solas says, moving away from his wretchedly sweet overtures to his great love for her. “It should give you some sense of the intrigue and tension around the item, or so I think.”

Lavellan wants to tease more and accuse Solas of just carting her around to show off his pretty old haunts, but a more pertinent observation arises in her mind. “So you and Dirthamen were working together at the beginning of this ordeal.”

Solas nods once. “Yes. Dirthamen had an impressive information network. When I was investigating the excursion Andruil took into dwarven territory our spies kept tripping over one another. Eventually he and I formed an alliance: though we did not trust or particularly like one another, we respected the other’s skills with technical magic and thought that collaboration would most likely afford us access to the orb and help us unlock its secrets.” Solas exhales a humming sigh and with a gesture signals to Lavellan that they are taking another turn. At certain junctions, green and gold banners on which a simple geometric depiction of an arrow on a drawn bow hang. “I suppose it makes sense that it was he who stole and locked away the artifact. He would have wanted it more than any of the others.”

As they traverse the maze down through a number of terraces, the two elves begin to come upon the ornate golden structures that Lavellan had seen from above: cages playing host to the creatures of a menagerie. The fauna held therein ranges from squealing nugs mottled with unnatural patterns and gibbons hanging down from the bars of their cages on their long and spindly arms to fat and lazy tigers basking in the summer sun and enormous snakes coiled in heaps. Among the collection are a number of strange and near-indescribable creatures Lavellan has never seen before in all her adventures. From within the confines of their gilded cages nestled amidst the rich and varied greenery, the captive animals stare through the two trespassers who make their way through the garden. One especially grand and aureate cage contains a melanistic wyvern that circles tyrannically and hatefully over the ground of its small and bounded kingdom. The beast is sleek, black, and beautiful, with vitriol perhaps more toxic than the venom in its fangs sparkling in its dark eye.

At long last Solas and Lavellan emerge from the maze and come to an open lawn. In the middle of the grass there is a white stone block upon which a tent is pitched. They walk through the yard and around the tent’s backdrop to see that the other side is open entirely, allowing those inside to look out over the gardens on the terraces below and the forest around them. In the tent around a heavy and intricately carved wooden table that rests atop a bright and intricately pattered silken rug, three beautiful people blink into existence with a flare of green. One is a doppelgänger of Lavellan’s host and like the other two Fen’Harel rests still as a statue. Lavellan stops her surveil of the scene momentarily to appreciate that she has discovered why Solas had always been so set on using magic and expending mana to protect himself from the sun in their desert sojourns: he tans like the redhead he is. (Or perhaps was.) Solas has always had a few pale marks on his face, but this second projection of him is smattered with freckles, dots spanning the bridge of his nose and emerging from the loose-hanging turquoise blue sleeves of his light summer robe. He looks in some areas pinkish as if he had recently sustained some sort of sunburn. The Dread Wolf does not look very dread or much like a deity of any type or level, even with all his ostentatious jewelry. The other two who sit with him certainly look much more like gods. When they speak, Lavellan cannot discern if their conversation is in Elvish or if it has been translated by the Fade to Common—all she knows is that like her dream earlier in the day, she understands every one of their words.

“Huntress,” comes the deep and clear voice of the darkly-swaddled god of hidden knowledge. He wears a silver and onyx diadem atop his neat and close-cropped black hair, a gem-encrusted brooch of a raven with its wings spread wide supporting a wide black sash draping over his deep purple doublet, and a pair of impressive epaulets accented by dark feathers. Dirthamen’s features are pointed and severe but together their intensity makes for an appealing visage. The strangest and most striking thing about the man are his eyes: they are wholly pitch from lid to lid like the bead-black eyes of a bird. It is impossible to tell where he is looking or who he is watching.

Andruil almost glows draped in cloth-of-gold. The air on the patio is warm, and she leans back on a luxuriant cape of spotted fur she has removed from over her shoulders and laid on her chair as a cushion. Atop her white-blonde braided hair sits a tiara of yellow diamonds set in white gold. From behind her pointed ears spikes of the tiara jut, evoking the tufted ears of a lynx. Andruil gives a melodic hum as a tattooed server makes a meek round of the table to fill three large opalescent chalices with wine from a pitcher. The Huntress greets her visitors, “You make a gracious guest as always, Secret-Keeper. And now you pet-sit! I was very surprised to hear you would be accompanying Mythal’s dog.”

“It is a pleasure to see you too, Andruil,” Solas’s past self says with a smile. His presence seems to be met with a discomfited suspicion from his host. Andruil scrutinizes him—and so, perhaps, does Dirthamen—with her brows raised and then furrowed slightly. He leans back in his chair with his legs crossed, his freckled hands and their ringed fingers folded at his lap. When the enslaved pitcher-bearer pours Fen’Harel’s wine he makes haste to rouse himself, take hold of his cup, and drink of it with no regard to his silent watchers. For a seemingly appreciative moment Fen’Harel basks in the quiet surveillance of the others, but finally with a soft tinge of red lingering at his mouth, he asks, “I trust you have been well?”

“We need not waste our time exchanging empty pleasantries,” says Dirthamen. His tone is terse and hurried. “I think we should all prefer to finish our business here as quickly as we can.”

Andruil replies, “I suppose you have come to me to discuss the issue with Elgar’nan and Falon’Din. Representatives for each have requested my audience and I suppose they will be receiving it sometime soon. I know nothing of their little spat other than that it is extant and ongoing. As of late my attention has been paid to developments within the borders of my own realm.”

“Am I to believe you have missed entirely a conflict that threatens the peace of the Mirthdr’atish?” Dirthamen almost spits. A great amount of disdain for the woman at the head of the table is palpable in his voice and expression: his thin lips are pulled tight in a sort of pained grimace as he speaks. “Unbelievable. The treaty between the gods may soon be breached: Elgar’nan wants the head of Falon’Din’s Legate, and Falon’Din has refused to turn the woman over. He welcomes our King-God to send his armies to retrieve her.”

“Hm. Elgar’nan wants Alas’Hanin dead?” Andruil is bemused by this. She chuckles and rolls her head in a lazy stretch. Lazing beneath the canopy of her great garden she returns Dirthamen’s glare with a smile that feigns easiness. Her eyes almost twinkle in a feline green-gold. “A shame, the girl makes good company on a hunt. So what is it that you ask of me?”

“I would have thought that you might wish to hear more about a situation that threatens the continent with war,” says Dirthamen.

The Huntress gives a shallow laugh. “I will be hearing it twice later this week from the representatives. Why should I have to suffer through whatever dull story you bear three times over?” Andruil asks. She shrugs into her large cape and Dirthamen seethes.

The wine glasses are translucent and it is apparent that Fen’Harel’s drink is half-gone, whereas the Evanuris have hardly partaken. The Dread Wolf sets the glass down and suggests to Andruil, “These representatives shall most likely present a distorted account of the events to you in order to further their own agendas. So shall we, but perhaps it may be wise of you to…” he looks to the awning above him as it inflates and deflates ever so slightly in the summer breeze as he searches for a word, “…triangulate discrepancies.”

A sudden bitterness withers the voice of the previously smug and genial Andruil as she snaps: “I will have none of your games here. Watch your tongue and don’t lecture me on what I should or should not do. From what the Secret-Keeper says, it seems to be a dangerous time for Legates who do not know their places.”

The redheaded man frowns and proceeds with an odd, scripted proclamation of contrition. He is not fearful or contrite, nor is he mocking when he offers, “My sincerest apologies, Your Splendor.” The Dread Wolf places his chalice on the table and stands to bow to the Huntress. “It was inappropriate of me to offer my counsel unsolicited, and foolish of me to question your great wisdom. If there is any way in which I might repent for my disrespect—”

“—hush,” Andruil demands harshly. Glee cuts through her still sour and rushed tone as she suggests, “If you truly wish to repent for your disrespect and secure my favor we should need to discuss matters…privately. Think not even of your own security—it would most certainly be a shame if you jeopardized the Mother Goddess’s ends through your own impudence.”

“I have done nothing to deserve your kindness, and yet you grant it so magnanimously,” Fen’Harel sighs as he returns to his seat. The sigh is not quite in relief. “Thank you, Your Radiance,” he adds.

The man very quickly raises his chalice to drink again but the whole scene freezes as Solas begins to laugh beside Lavellan. “The look on your face,” he says, his voice as light and airy for the squalid scene. Perhaps because of Solas’s presence, guidance, and organization of the Fade, watching the meeting has proven different from watching the forgotten court earlier in the day. She had been a disembodied observer with blurred vision and a fuddled memory then, but now she is concrete and clear enough for Solas to observe her and make fun of her.

Solas is amused and Lavellan is confused. She asks, “I didn’t…misread that, did I?”

“No,” he says. Solas rolls his eyes a little as a grin begins to form. “I was being propositioned, backed with threats of violence and political retaliation.”

“And you find it funny.” This troubles Lavellan, and inside her a number of upsetting thoughts muddle. She has had her own bad luck in the wilds where she had learned that giggling and playing along would increase the chances of her leaving the situation alive and unbloodied. Though its pretenses are draped in silk and studded with jewels, Lavellan sees the same practice here and is disgusted. Yet Solas looks upon it and laughs! If he will not grow angry for himself, Lavellan will. A feeling of enraged protectiveness for Solas against this long-locked away goddess rises up within Lavellan. How dare anyone approach another person like that, especially Lavellan’s own—her own what? Her rage spikes with some sort of of ugly possessiveness and with that she chokes it back. When Lavellan tries to distance herself from her thoughts she sees an expression she feels like must be very close to her own frozen on Dirthamen’s face: the corners of his lips are drawn back in an askew frown. His black eyes are narrowed, his nostrils are flared, and his brow is furrowed in what looks like anger and irritation. Lavellan indicates towards the other god: “Oh look, he thinks it’s gross too.”

“Likely only for lack of subtlety,” Solas says with a sigh and a completely bewildering bemusement playing through his voice. He seems to not think very highly of the Secret-Keeper or the Huntress—though Lavellan had known as much about his general thoughts of the Evanuris. Solas notices Lavellan’s ongoing discomfit and immediately realizes what must be the source: “My apologies. I am just...very glad for your reaction of disdain. After they have been worshipped as avatars of wisdom and goodness for so long, I find it refreshing to see someone look upon the Evanuris and regard them for what they truly are. These false gods cared only for their own power—they would attempt to extort whatever they could from a person to make show of their own strength. Often when they could they sought sex from the Empire’s most powerful or, on occasion, from one another as a show of personal domination. Andruil assumed I was there to ask a favor of her on behalf of Mythal and wished to make me aware that the success of my mission was dependent on pleasing her.”

“That’s a horribly uncomfortable situation to find yourself in,” Lavellan says.

“I would not laugh if any person other than myself was the object of these attentions.” Solas appraises almost wistfully the image of himself in the past and Lavellan follows his line of sight. She sees that the Dread Wolf is giving a mirthful wince into the glass of wine raised to his lips, as if he is hiding that he is laughing at the goddess who sits across the table from him. Heavy concern must still be manifest in Lavellan’s expression, because when he turns to her, the grin on Solas’s face softens. He reaches over to her to pet and squeeze her upper arm fondly. “You need not worry about me. I did not feel threatened or trapped in any way, but I played as if I was to flatter the Huntress. As frustrating and degrading as doing so could be, it was often expeditious to indulge the Evanuris. Most of their number could be made more genial if they were lead to believe one came to them desperate for their help or approval. Look,” Solas says, “she is almost giddy.”

The scene starts again with tension draining from Andruil’s form. She crosses her legs and looks over the Dread Wolf—who seems less dread than even before—one last time with much less discomfort but perhaps more scrutiny than she had surveyed him with previously. She smiles a sharp smile as she gives her attention over to Dirthamen. “Perhaps I may have some time to listen. What did that Legate do to anger our most illustrious ruler?”

The dark-haired and raven-eyed Dirthamen begins the story: “Five lords sworn to loyalty to Elgar’nan travelled to the seat city of Falon’Din’s lands to call on a Senator they sought to lobby. One of the number was a representative to Arlathan himself. If you wish to know, their names were—“

“Don’t waste your breath. It matters little to me,” interrupts Andruil.

Andruil must be trying to anger Dirthamen with her interruptions and refusals, Lavellan realizes, because upon hearing this the Secret-Keeper once more seethes. “After the successful political venture they decided to stay longer to experience the city and rented a manse in which they could revel without decorum. They attended a production of the opera Funeral of a Prince and from their high box a number of the noblemen grew enamored with the prima donna—So enamored that after the performance they sent her an invitation to join them at the manse the next evening to entertain at a dinner party. The prima donna came to the manse but found no dinner party, only three men who wished to have her. When the singer rebuffed their advances the noblemen grew angry and forced themselves on her and held her in the manse for three days.”

“Boors,” says Andruil, her nose scrunching in disgust. Resolutely after a terse sip of wine she seems to brag, “I myself would have the men gelded if the matter was brought before me. But how does the rape of an opera singer start a war? Did it turn out the girl was highborn, seeking thrill and fame on the stage? She had to be one of Falon’Din’s nobles’ daughters to get Alas’Hanin and Falon’Din himself involved.”

Dirthamen shakes his head. “By the singer’s name, she is of common stock. The noblemen would likely have restrained themselves if they were aware their indiscretion would cause trouble.”

“Mm. Then how—“

“The girl was Alas’Hanin’s lover,” Dirthamen explains.

“A-ha, it comes together now! What an unfortunate coincidence,” the Huntress laughs. She looks upon Fen’Harel, who is lifting his glass towards the slave to have it filled. “You. You’ve been quiet—perhaps too much so. Your station brings you into contact with Falon’Din’s Legate. Had you ever met her prima donna?”

“I have met her a number of times, yes,” Fen’Harel replies. He does not elaborate.

Unsatisfied with the terse answer, Andruil muses, “So, tell me what you think. Is this little soprano worth a war between gods?”

“—it’s not about the prima donna,” Dirthamen hisses before the Dread Wolf has any chance to answer. “It’s not even about Alas’Hanin. If you would just listen! When Alas’Hanin heard what had befallen her lover at the hands of Elgar’nan’s noblemen, she acted swiftly. Mere hours after the singer was let free the Legate sent guards to have all five men detained. Word of the arrests soon reached Elgar’nan, and the Gods’ King asked that Falon’Din release the prisoners to him. Falon’Din ignored Elgar’nan and instead allowed Alas’Hanin to prosecute them. She put them to full trial, and three were convicted of rape and executed, and the two who were not involved were found accessory to the crime. Elgar’nan was furious. He knew full well that Falon’Din had encourage the prosecutions and executions in an act of defiance, but offered him a chance to repent and show deference by placing the blame on the Legate. The King demanded that Falon’Din turn over the two living men and Alas’Hanin. Falon’Din responded by sending Alas’Hanin and the prisoners off to the Din’Irassan—his impenetrable fortress, the strongest in all Elvhenan.”

“What say you to that, Dread Wolf?” asks Andruil.

“I have my thoughts, but I have already been properly reprimanded: it would not do for a mere Legate to correct one of his gods,” Fen’Harel jokes, and the Huntress laughs a trilling laugh.

Disgruntled and frustrated, Dirthamen closes his eyes and continues, “We now risk an end to our peace: Falon’Din has invited Elgar’nan to come take his Legate’s head if he dares. The Gods’ King intends to rise to that challenge and now prepares his armies to march on the Din’Irassan.”

“This actually is rather interesting,” drawls Andruil. “The King has the grandest army of all, but Falon’Din’s is not so far behind. And those mountains…even before Elgar’nan’s army neared the fortress or any other tactical target a relatively small force of Falon’Din’s fighters trained on the terrain could shred through their ranks. And if Alas’Hanin is defending the Din’Irassan…the casualties of a siege would be enormous. Hm.”

“She sounds gleeful,” Lavellan says as the scene before them comes to a halt once more.

Solas says, “Of course. She wanted the armies to destroy one another. Near all the Evanuris wanted the God’s King overthrown so that they might seize some of his power, and if Falon’Din’s military took on heavy damage in the conflict, that would be all for the better.”

Lavellan remembers a short and uncomfortable answer given by Solas’s past self. Almost tenderly she ventures, “You…knew the prima donna used as a pretense for all of this.”

“Her name was Virena,” says Solas with a nod. He speaks softly and calmly when he starts but as he continues an anger comes to sharpen his words. “She was a kind person and a lover of music and the arts. Alas’Hanin and I maintained a close relationship for diplomatic purposes and I came to know her and her partner well. They were both admirable women whose company I enjoyed: I suppose I did consider them friends. No person deserves to have happen what happened to Virena—and no person deserves to have their tragedy so relentlessly exploited. The only person who fought for Virena’s sake was Alas’Hanin. She was content to be used as a pawn in the game between her liege and the Gods’ King if it meant she could punish those who would have stopped her from avenging what was done. But the Evanuris, so eager to shift the balance of power in Elvhenan potentially to their advantage and the lords and generals who longed for the spoils of war… They all celebrated the incident for its consequences, and toasted to Virena’s tears.”

Lavellan recognizes Solas’s enmity. In it there is something similar to his outrage over the binding and corruption of the spirit he had called a friend. Solas often could be found grumpy or irate, but was never enraged to the point of yelling—but an exception was made when he bore witness to mages hoping to use the suffering of his friend as a vehicle for their own selfish ends. To comfort him now Lavellan leans in slightly to Solas, her side pressing against his. The figures at the table begin speaking again and Lavellan feels a grateful hand almost gingerly resting itself on the small of her back. “Has Mythal, arbiter of justice, weighed the rights and wrongs under the Mirthdr’atish?” Andruil asks. “Even the Gods’ King must bow before the law.”

“Mythal has made no official statement yet,” says the Dread Wolf.

“And what might you say unofficially?”

“Unofficially, it is messy. Whether or not either have violated the treaty already with their actions is unsettled. As you well know a number of the terms therein are ambiguous and their interpretations are subject to debate. Mythal remains neutral and hopes to arbitrate the situation. We would hope you would pledge neutrality too—unless, of course, either Falon’Din or Elgar’nan violates the Mirthdr’atish in some clear way. Then we would ask you to side against the breaching party.”

“As usual,” Andruil declares with a bored yawn. She turns her feline gaze to Dirthamen and finds entertainment in mocking him: “So what do you want, Secret-Keeper? Support for your Heart’s Heart and his Legate in the tower? Maybe the two of us can work out some arrangement.”

“I too want neutrality and a reaffirmation of support for the Mirthdr’atish,” Dirthamen answers. He pauses and grinds his teeth before drawing a breath and continuing, “Elvhenan is the greatest civilization to have grown upon this continent and as its gods and champions we must act the part by honoring not only the letter of the laws we have laid out but their spirit. We shall not descend into chaos and bloodshed for the sake of slights.”

Andruil seems surprised by Dirthamen’s stance. She raises a brow and appraises him as if she is trying to find signs of deceit manifest in his being. “Hm. I shall think on this all! Neutrality is in some sense appealing. Watching Falon’Din and Elgar’nan grind each other to dust from the comfort of my hunting lodge...that might be satisfying. Is that all the two of you have come for?”

“No,” says Fen’Harel as his chalice is again refilled by the slave. He does not seem at all tipsy and speaks softly and clearly as he explains, “I am more importantly here to speak to you about your own violation of the Mirthdr’atish. In addition to being our arbiter of justice, Mythal is responsible for overseeing the Empire’s diplomatic relations with the Children of the Stone. Complaints have come from Kal-Sharok to Mythal purporting that an elvhen military force sporting your heraldry seized a dwarven operation and seized its miners as slaves. These reports are corroborated by intelligence the Secret-Keeper passed on to us of his own volition. Under the Mirthdr’atish, preemptive military action against the Children of the Stone must be approved by a majority vote from the Senate or unanimously by the Evanuris. If these allegations are true, your invasion would very clearly constitute the breaking of the treaty. How do you answer, Huntress?” The Dread Wolf smiles at Andruil, dark red wine coloring his pink lips.

“Isn’t this an awfully proper job for the Dread Wolf?” Andruil almost purrs. Her eyes dart between her two guests pulled to and fro with great tension, even while she slouches in her chair. Her glare towards Dirthamen seems especially venomous. “From my understanding, Mythal only lets you free from your cage to deal with matters too unsavory for the goddess of justice to be seen administrating.”

“And this is not one of those, no,” he answers almost sweetly. “Mythal regrets she cannot come speak to you in person, but our Mother Goddess is preoccupied mediating the conflict we previously discussed. As such she sent me in her stead.” Fen’Harel pauses and lifts his cup to take another sip of his wine. “She thought you might prefer expediency over formality.”

Andruil precedes with a cutting caution. “My Legate took the initiative on his own. I assigned him the task of procuring resources to supply my armies, and for his own indolence he fell behind. Apparently he thought he might make up time he had lost to frivolous and self-serving pursuits by seizing land and labor from the dwarves. When word of my Legate’s actions and his utter brutality towards the slaves came to my attention, I stopped the mining operation entirely. My investigation into this internal affair showed that not only had he acted out of turn, he had gone mad. Suffice to say, he is no longer my Legate. I have him imprisoned beneath the keep of my hold.”

“Ah, so you are handling the issue. Good. Under the Mirthdr’atish you must testify before the Eva—”

“—I will discuss the matter with Mythal herself,” the Huntress interrupts. “I should not need to waste my time with the protocol and suffer consequences for the deeds of one man—deeds I did not sanction.”

Fen’Harel nods. “As I said, Mythal does understand a preference for expediency over formality. If you would like, I could handle the problem quietly to the Mother Goddess’s satisfaction.”

“And what of him?” Andruil asks of Dirthamen. She talks past the subject of her concern to Fen’Harel: “I thought it was two ravens in his heraldry—not two rats. I will have to look at the banners again next time our Secret- _Teller_ hosts a soirée. He was certainly willing to pass information about me to Mythal—who is to say that he will not demand full proceedings before the other Evanuris?”

“You will have to take my word that I will not,” Dirthamen answers. “The others will use the sanctions process to instigate a war and break the peace—without violating the treaty themselves. I came to the Mother Goddess so your trespass could be managed in silence.”

“You care so much about peace all of a sudden.” Andruil laughs. She seems to always be laughing. “I see now why Mythal sent you, Dread Wolf. I suppose the Children of the Stone want restitution. My former Legate’s estate is worth a considerable amount. His family will not miss it.”

Much in the way one would ramble through a tired list of their daily chores, Fen’Harel says, “I will begin to make arrangements. I will need to take custody of your former Legate, and as such I will call on your keep soon. I do not know if you have assessed the damage to the mine yourself, but the dwarves allege your Legate incurred a significant amount of wreckage. As substantial as the sum from the sale of the estate might be, it might not cover what would be necessary to keep goodwill and quiet. There was a good amount of ore removed, mining equipment damaged often beyond repair, and a number of casualties. Furthermore, the dwarves may want the artifact you took from the mine.”

A dark and icy cold settles over the sun kissed and gold-clad Huntress. In a frigid voice she ventures, “The dwarves complained to Mythal that I stole an artifact from them?”

“I did not say I learned this from the dwarves,” Fen’Harel tells her. He lets out his pent-up expectation as his face lights up in a new excitement. “What do you know of it? Is it truly a gateway to the Void?” He is asking to bait her but it is obvious that he truly wants an answer.

“You should not bother asking her. From what I understand, it tears apart the minds of those who come near,” Dirthamen says. Andruil’s eyes fall upon him and her gaze is absolutely withering, but he does not shrink back. “Do you think you could hide your secrets from me?”

“Who else knows?” she hisses.

“From our intelligence, none of the six others,” the Secret-Keeper replies.

“Six?” Andruil glances towards Fen’Harel. “Intriguing.”

“I don’t tell Mythal of everything I learn,” the Dread Wolf responds with a small shrug and a furtive smile. “The two of us would like to study your finding.”

Andruil gives a sudden cackle. “What a presumptuous thing to ask! Whatever could be in that for me?”

“I am the most skilled of the gods in the technical arts of the arcane, and the dog knows his tricks. You are not so inclined towards detail and innovation, as you have channeled your magics into the art of war and the production of shows of brute force. You are poorly equipped to handle what you have found, and only a fool would not accept that,” Dirthamen answers. “True, you would risk sharing sensitive knowledge of the orb with us, but your power would grow immensely over the others with what we could do. In denying us access you miss a critical opportunity and chance for an alliance.”

Andruil waives away the offer: “I may not be quite so wily as you, Secret-Keeper, but I have great power and knowledge, and technical experts of my own.”

With his dark eyes narrowed, Dirthamen warns, “You are making a grave mistake.”

“What are you going to do? Tell the others and hope they come do your work for you?” The Huntress taunts, “I welcome it.”

“No. I personally do not want to give Elgar’nan a new toy,” Fen’Harel says. He spins his wine in the chalice and watches its residue drip down on the inside of his cup instead of looking to his host. “Which is what would become of the orb if the others became involved, by the way. Though I suppose the Gods’ King would be wise enough to accept some sort of bargain that would allow the two of us access.”

“What was that, Legate? I could have sworn I told you to watch your tongue.”

The Dread Wolf does not bow or apologize this time as he had for his previous slight. He does not even look at her when he speaks, still focused on his drink. “I thought you didn’t want the attention of the others on you. If you managed to kill me, that might draw it.”

“If I managed! I now hold the power to destroy the entire pantheon if I so wish, but even before you would have never—”

His eyes seem to flash violet when Fen’Harel abruptly shifts his gaze onto Andruil and sharply interrupts the goddess: “Oh, do you now hold it? I do not see it in your hand. If my sources tell me correctly, you have it bound away in a canyon where it can be contained by a hundred of your acolyte mages. You are using a staggering amount of lyrium to power your wards, bind spirits, and maintain barriers. Each day you require more, and can only buy it from discrete sellers who charge ever-climbing rates for their silence. It shall be interesting to see a goddess bankrupt herself. What in your realms will you cannibalize first to maintain the containment? Of course you will first tax and starve your peasantry. But what next? Will you force open the coffers of your nobles? Defund your armies? Or will you skip bleeding your people of their gold and once more go straight to cutting open the veins of your slaves?” Fen’Harel’s voice spikes, but before it raises any further he pauses to choke back his animosity. “You have done so before.” Andruil, her nostrils flared, opens her mouth to retort, but Fen’Harel raises one finger in a motion demanding that she wait. “Let me finish. I can speak for Mythal in saying that she will not rush to take pieces of your lands or to depose you, but I’m sure our friend here won’t make that promise, nor will any of the others.”

Andruil insists, “Under the Mirthdr’atish—“

“The Mirthdr’atish!” Fen’Harel almost sneers to interrupt once more. He gives a single lacerating laugh and flashes his wine-dark teeth in an imperious grin. He need not be polite any longer and he will not suffer to do so. “That does not matter. There’s nothing in the treaty between the gods to stop lords from rescinding fealty from a foolish and failing goddess. They will find their new lieges. Your borders will recede and your armies will erode. Each day you sit on your hands you stumble closer to ruin.”

“I wonder what the commonfolk will sing about the downfall of a goddess,” Dirthamen muses. “I suppose we will learn soon enough.”

Indignant, Andruil pulls herself to her feet. “Get out. The both of you, get out.”

Dirthamen himself gets up from where he is sitting and straightens out his black robes. He has not once drank of his wine. “Happily. I will tell you this: Once you ruin yourself, I will take the orb for myself. You can be assured of that. May your ruin come swiftly so as to not prolong either of our waits.”

“If the orb promises my destruction, it surely will promise yours,” spits the Huntress. “And yours as well, dog. Now leave.”

“I am very sorry that it comforts you to think that,” Fen’Harel says. His voice is again gentle and the kindness in it now seems a sort of cruel mockery.

“You do not expect me to be convinced that even with all your spies and your skill with spirits—“

“—that we have found a way to control the orb?” the Dread Wolf finishes her thought. He gives a laugh. “The truth stands regardless of your beliefs.” The last of the three beautiful people sitting stands and becomes the first to amble away from the table. He crosses the threshold of the marble platform into the grass barefooted. He explains to those he leaves behind, “I would hate to overstay my welcome. Thank you for the wine,” and with this all three figures flicker green and like a flame extinguishing, disappear.

* * *

After making their way back through the garden maze, Solas and Lavellan step out of a bright mirror and into a dark hallway. “This way,” Solas says, pointing to the left down the corridor. The walls are made of stone and the air is dry and dusty. Solas is eager to hear Lavellan’s opinions on the politics of Elvhenan: “What are your thoughts?”

“Well, I’ve spent the past day reconsidering my lack of faith, reflecting on powers unfathomable, and reassessing what gods might be, but after seeing that I think I’ve found my childhood atheism to have been pretty solidly vindicated. But more importantly, I couldn’t help but notice that someone was having fun being mean,” Lavellan teases as she begins to amble in the direction Solas indicated. The meeting on the lawn had been in some sense relevant to the Conflux but she feels that Solas’s reasons for bringing her to the memory had been much more personal—he had wanted her to see him as a scathing young fixer reviled and feared by his supposed betters.

“I don’t think I was being particularly cruel,” Solas insists, “but I cannot deny that I derived enjoyment from the negotiations. I have seen you revel in similar satisfaction on occasions where you outsmarted and outmaneuvered human nobles and intelligentsia who, on account of your pointed ears, refused to regard you as anything more than a simple-minded savage.”

“Andruil was very eager to keep you in the place she thought you belonged. Dirthamen too, even though he was allied with you,” Lavellan observes. She remembers the disdain in their voices and their eyes as they looked upon him and for a moment she thinks of how Vivienne regarded Solas. Yet despite her air of power and influence, Vivienne was in truth captive in a gilded cage desperately invested in her attempts to climb her confines bars. Her disdain for Solas (and Sera, and Thom Rainier, and perhaps even Lavellan herself) came from an internal misery and personal deprivation she could not and would never admit. The Evanuris were, for all intents and purposes, gods but they would not bear that any other act their equal. Their insecurity was a self-inflicted paranoia, a seeming disconnect from a reality in which they were material beings that operated on an echelon attainable by other material beings. Solas seemed to have triggered a sort of cognitive dissonance in them and as such warranted harsh disregard. Despite the two gods’ fondness for animal motifs (Dirthamen had his ravens and in her dress Andruil emulated the lynx) those creatures were just that: symbols for heraldry and inspiration for style. To them Solas must actually be an animal, lesser and degraded—the two had repeatedly called Solas not a wolf but a _dog_. Wolves are wild animals but dogs can be brought to heel. After a long moment of silence, Lavellan finally adds, “It’s like dealing with Orlesians, only worse.”

“The politics of the Evanuris were less affairs of church or state and more personal spats. Eight people spent millennia growing to hate and resent one another but had such power at their disposal that they could destroy entire cities to prolong and exacerbate their petty grudges.” The conflict Lavellan had just witnessed seemed personal for Solas too. He exhales a small sigh as he walks at the Inquisitor’s side with his hands folded behind his back. “Goings on in Arlathan’s Senate and courts or even dealings with nobles were often much more interesting, and much more productive.”

Something about the dynamic of the conversation remains on Lavellan’s mind. “Dirthamen seemed like his interests were aligned with yours in preventing war. I didn’t expect that from the way you’d spoken about the members of the pantheon who weren’t Mythal.”

“Ha. Dirthamen only took such a stance because Falon’Din was occupied with Elgar’nan,” Solas explains. “Dirthamen and Falon’Din are called brothers in your legends. In actuality they were lovers, and perhaps, as they swore it, more. Their relationship was tempestuous and they were prone to betray one another for the sake of pride and passion. All the same, they did deeply adore one another. Though his own magic was powerful, he had a strong trade in secrets, and the capacity to excel in diplomacy—which for him was a fancy name for blackmail—Dirthamen in these years did not have a particularly powerful military. Falon’Din had pledged his support against threats from the other gods and dangerous internal threats within Dirthamen’s lands and as such these dangers were kept at bay. Had Falon’Din fallen, or had his military capacity been significantly damaged from war with Elgar’nan, Dirthamen would have been vulnerable to attack and destabilization by the other gods.”

“But what about the Mirthdr’atish? From what I could gather, the treaty seemed to serve to prevent the Evanuris from beginning wars with one another. Wouldn’t that protect him from intercession by other gods?”

“The Evanuris were always trying to find loopholes in the terms of the treaty or even discover reasons within the provisions to precipitate war. It is astounding the peace lasted as long as it did—fighting alongside Mythal to uphold it was like trying to keep a house of cards upright and intact.”

Lavellan hums slightly. She thinks of her own duties as Inquisitor that do not involve saving the world and feels as if some things truly haven’t changed since the time of Arlathan. “With all that in mind I think I might see Dirthamen’s incentive for acquiring access to an otherworldly power.”

“Some part of him was curious, I think, for only knowledge’s sake.” Solas pauses. Their footsteps echo in the hallway in the silence. “Hm. I wonder if he resumed study any further after he stole it. Most likely not—I like to think I would have found out.”

The two come to the end of the tunnel and enter into a vast and largely unadorned foyer with a floor of tiled granite. The few decorations in the room are green and gold banners that Lavellan recognizes from the garden maze—they must be Andruil’s heraldry. The back of the foyer where she and Solas now stand is dark and lit dimly by hanging orbs that cast bronze glows. At the front, a wall is missing and sunlight pours through the aperture. It is about ten feet high and runs over fifty feet long and Lavellan can make out only a craggy and stratified wall of rock outside. She realizes that Solas has led her to another scene from memory as a frozen image of his past self standing alongside the Secret-Keeper flickers into view. Much of the Dread Wolf’s freckling has faded and Dirthamen looks somehow even more somber than he had before. The two wear ceremonial armor. Lavellan recognizes Solas’s set from when she had confronted him at the eluvian. With more flickers of green, a number of elves manifest themselves in the foyer. Some are in fine robes and others wear plain or ragged clothes and bear the tattoos of subservience, but all are busy. Some conjure charts and chat intently among themselves and with spirits that skirt wispily around them, and others haul wheelbarrows with glass jugs that give the dull glow of processed lyrium through the foyer to the many egresses from the room. Several are crowded up to the aperture and many of them seem to be actively engaged in spellcasting towards something outside.

“Your Worships. It is an honor to bear witness to your splendor,” says a tattooed man to the two armored men as the memory begins. “I will go with haste to tell Her Excellence, My Goddess Andruil that Your Perfections have arrived.”

With little regard for the slave rushing off, Dirthamen turns to Fen’Harel. “So. Tell me. How did you convince the Huntress to allow us to come here and see the orb?”

“My work for Mythal necessitated I call on Andruil once more to resolve with her issue with the dwarves. By that time, she had considered our offer further,” Fen’Harel responds as he adjusts the tie that holds his hair up and back off his face. “I think she may have finally done the calculus on her expenditures.”

“My networks brought to me rumors from far and wide alleging that the Dread Wolf came upon the deposed Legate and for his misdeeds took him away. Was he mad as the spies suggested?” Dirthamen appears to be staring straight ahead with his pitch black eyes. “Look at the staff who keep this facility. In every one of them there is a terrible tension, a haunted look. Watch as they jump at shadows.”

“It could be Andruil’s management,” Fen’Harel jokes. When he sees Dirthamen is unamused he rolls his eyes and continues, “Japing aside, yes, the man was mad. It was…disturbing, to say the least. We should be cautious when we handle the object.”

“Have you considered that this may be a trap the Huntress laid for us?”

Fen’Harel laughs. “You think she intends to feed us to it?”

The dark-haired man makes a disgusted noise. “Have you any personal wards? Her mages noticed and confiscated my amulet upon arrival and I did not wish to jeopardize our presence here by insisting they unhand my things.”

“Of course,” Fen’Harel says. One of his hands does not host a gauntlet and he begins to fidget with the rings on its fingers, sliding them to certain digits and turning them in particular ways. The warded rings begin to exude a barely discernible glow, and from her quiet watchpoint Lavellan realizes that at least some of the flashy jewelry on Solas’s past self that she had found so uncharacteristic had been donned for practical purposes. The Dread Wolf speaks as he fiddles with the rings. “These componential wards are not as strong as the one in your amulet, but they are much more versatile and their effects are much harder to detect. You really should switch over—or at least supplement what you already carry with a set.” The image of them grows fuzzy and flickers, and at times drops in and out entirely once the wards begin to limit and distort what spirits can see and remember of the event. “We are silenced aurally and I doubt Andruil will think to commune with the few classes of spirits that will not be pushed away by this. What do you wish to say?”

“I would not put it past that woman to try and murder us,” Dirthamen insists. The quality of his voice is strange and warped, but his words  are clear and uninterrupted. Lavellan sees that the image seems to flicker in and out with movement of Fen’Harel’s eyes. The conversation inside the wards must come entirely from Solas’s memory. With that in mind the Inquisitor wonders if she is seeing the truth. The Secret-Keeper says, “It is amazing someone with such a dull mind commands such brute power—I suppose we should be grateful she lacks the faculties to manage it properly.”

“She cares little for decency or the Mirthdr’atish, it’s true—but she wouldn’t risk angering Mythal…or, for that matter, Falon’Din. I figure even now he might spare a platoon or two for someone who tried to harm you.” His mind seems elsewhere and the image of the becomes wispy and slowly drops away after he begins to move to stare towards towards the aperture. It comes back with the Dread Wolf returning the pointed glare of the Secret-Keeper. Fen’Harel shrinks back slightly with a frown. “What is it? You are glowering at me.”

“Do you not ever grow tired of living life under Mythal’s thumb? You are not as ancient as we are, so much is true. But your magic is considerable and by your own standing you are respected and feared. You have temples of your own and legions of worshippers among the commonfolk—more than any other Legate by far. And your service as a field marshal in the Lost War…Surely you are aware that a significant contingency of the Mother Goddess’ army and perhaps of her nobles might be loyal to you first and foremost.”

The Dread Wolf does not react to the observations. “What are you suggesting?”  
  
“I am suggesting nothing—instead I voice suspicion. I do not believe you have no ambitions of your own.” Dirthamen’s black eyes narrow.

“You would be correct in believing that,” Fen’Harel says. “Would you like to guess at what those ambitions are?”

The invitation offends the Secret-Keeper. “It will not serve you well to toy with me, dog,” he hisses in a flare of temper. Swallowing his irritation, Dirthamen asks, “In truth I did not expect Andruil to invite us back. She must be desperate. Tell me, how did you discern which method would contain the orb? From the information we had—”

“Well, I have a handful of theories,” Fen’Harel looks sheepishly away.

“But you said at the meeting on the terrace—“ Dirthamen roils when he realizes the feint. “You lie even to your allies,” he spits.

“I did not lie,” Fen’Harel says, still intently staring elsewhere.

The scene pauses as Lavellan sourly observes, “You didn’t actually lie.” She peers around the scene to see that the frozen image of Fen’Harel is smiling and appears to be choking back a little laugh with his gaze averted from his companion.

“No. I really do try not to,” Solas says beside her. “For what it is worth.”

It’s really not worth much. “Half-truths and misdirections are much easier to manage.”

“But hardly any easier to sleep with on the conscience.”

“You sleep just fine.” For the sake of civility Lavellan comes around and kisses Solas’s cheek to soften the accusation. She wishes he wouldn’t play at being sorry when he is still hiding things from her. She feels like his trickery towards her in some sense equivocates her with the Evanuris, and that causes her to become a little sick. She struggles to stay sweet, “In all my experience, at least.”

“Getting to sleep is not necessarily the problem,” Solas says. Quickly he continues, “Though I will say I did not ever lose much of the peace in my rest over deceiving the Evanuris.”

Lavellan ventures, “On the terrace you said—heavily insinuated that Mythal didn’t know about the Conflux. But in my bedroom you told me that she had instructed you to study it. Which of those things is is true?”

“I told no lies to you or to the false gods,” answers Solas, “but I, as you would put it, offered them misdirection. It is true that I did not report everything that I uncovered in my many investigations to Mythal—but I did present her information on the Conflux, and she did instruct me to study it. Listen just now to the words of the Secret-Keeper. A good number of the Evanuris believed that encouraging my ambition might lead me to betray or attempt to usurp Mythal. They believed my treachery could strike a significant blow against her power, and as such the possibility of my disloyalty endeared me to them.” A look of sadness overwhelms him for a moment and he shakes it away. “Is that everything you wish to know?”

“Of course not,” Lavellan says, “but I can save some questions for later.” He had told her the truth—or so he claims. Lavellan cannot even find relief in that.

“There is the insatiable curiosity I so deeply admire.” Solas smiles at her and Lavellan feels lightheaded. Pain and illness from the residual effects of the Anchor has never chased her into her dreams and she does not think that is what is happening now.

The scene from memory begins again with Andruil’s approach. She too wears shining armor, but appears to be somewhat in disarray. Her blonde braids are loose atop her head and her emerald-green cloak is caught on a protrusion from her regalia before she rights it with a quick brush of her hand. “Are you prepared to contain it?” the Huntress asks without greeting the two.

“I would like to see it first,” answers the Dread Wolf as he covertly adjusts the last of his rings to their original positions on his fingers.

“It would be best if you were ready soon—your help will be required to hold it if it chooses today to have one of its little…spikes,” she says. She regards Fen’Harel more easily than she had during their conversation in the garden.

Dirthamen shoots an ugly look at Fen’Harel. “Just take us,” grumbles the Secret-Keeper.

Fen’Harel tries to start conversation as the three walk towards the aperture. “So, Huntress. Did you truly find it in the earth or was this somehow developed in a laboratory of sorts down there by accident?”

“It was found by my Legate where it lay dormant,” she answers.

“Who do you think made it? I did enquire in loose terms with the dwarves to see if they were familiar with anything of the sort. I obviously do not believe it is one of their enchantments, but many mysteries still surround the behemoths which—”

“—One of our People made it,” Dirthamen says.

The redheaded man frowns as if he is bothered by the sudden proclamation. “You sound very certain.”

Under his dark cloak Dirthamen is adamant: “There is no other possibility. There were once others among the First of Our People with great power.”

“I have not forgotten,” says Fen’Harel.

Andruil gives a laugh and muses, “Why should we worry? Whoever made it, they are long gone now.”

The three stand at an opening in a cliff wall. The aperture is a slit in the wall of a deep canyon boring far down into the earth. In the great opening of the canyon, an unnatural scene unfolds. Bright layers of barriers perhaps the size of mountains wrap about and hundreds thousands of spirits whirl aroud—nothing.

As the two watchers from the waking world position themselves at the precipice of the aperture somewhere alongside the three deities so they can better look upon the enormity in the canyon, Lavellan interrupts the memory to observe aloud, “I don’t see the Conflux.”

“No,” answers Solas. There is something grim about his aspect as he stares out over the scene. “The spirits of the Fade do not wish to render it—to capture its appearance and emulate its essence, even filtered through memory, would be in some sense terribly painful. They can only portray the reactions of the world around it.”

As the motion of the memory rouses itself again, Lavellan can see that the barrier around the dead space is so thick that it is translucent. In many places the rocks look as if they have been simply cut out and removed, and the walls of the canyon seem unnatural. A number of men and women in mage’s robes stand on scaffolding up these canyon walls. The rocks around them are covered in runes and assistive drawings in chalk and blood and at many of their feet rest casks that likely contain liquid lyrium. Spirits in the canyon whirl and thrash, pulling in and out around the blank center. Some take demonic forms as they are churned towards a second barrier in the middle, bursting with fear and fury. It is bright and overwhelming and terrible, and the light and the chaos in the air spills into the opening in the canyon wall. Even though nothing is there, close to it is an uncomfortable place to be.

“It is an odd sight, I must admit. We discovered if we have the spirits around it, when it spikes will in part sate itself with them before taking more of the world. Once we can control it I must show you how its power cuts through physical things and magical apparitions too weak to rebuff it. This canyon is much differently shaped than—” As Andruil looks up at the Conflux suspended in the mass of spirits and barriers, suddenly she jumps. “It’s doing it. It’s today! It’s opening, but it has not been so long as—” the Huntress hurriedly turns to the other two, her green-gold eyes wide and harrowed. “Quick. Pull up a barrier. If what I understand of what its strength will be is right…we will need to assist my mages in holding it. It will destroys of we do not!” She spins and casts her spell in a burst of arcane power. What hair is not held in her crown of braids is blown back as if by the winds of a gale.

No sooner do the eyes of the Secret-Keeper and The Dread Wolf begin to glow and does the barrier begins to thicken than a horrid noise emits when something impacts the glimmering wall. Warped shrieks of spirits sound as they are are torn up and consumed by some imperceptible force in the heart of the canyon. As the nothingness widens they are dissolved and soon they all are gone. The massive barrier gives a horrendous crackling and the edges warp and bubble from whatever it contains, making the gossamer film flail and strain under a desperate tension.

“That’s not how a barrier is damaged. That’s not how a barrier degrades,” insists Fen’Harel aloud but entirely to himself as he braces for the force up against which his magic abuts.

Andruil does not turn to her two companions when she shouts, “When I tell you to put more power into your barrier, do it! Do it if you want to live!”

A silence falls. There is nothing before the three for a moment other than their own conjuration.

“Now!” The huntress yells, and the ethereal shield thickens and stabilizes once more before being hit by a horrifying crack, like the wall is absorbing the power of ten million pounds of gaatlock detonating at one time. Rocks at the edge of the canyon crack and crumble as it seems like the whole world is made to shake. Whatever is not being shown is massive. The ground tremors wretchedly and acolytes and researchers topple over onto the ground from the violent reverberations. The three at the aperture do not shrink back.

Andruil, exhausted, shaking, but still standing, exclaims, “Behold what power I will wield.”

“No one else must know of this. Its secrets and its strength will be ours alone,” Dirthamen promises as he strains to hold his barrier.

The Dread Wolf does not speak like the other two. Fen’Harel stares right into the core of the nothingness, his eyes affixed on something deep within. Lavellan watches on and recognizes the look spreading across his face. She has not quite seen it but she knows it intimately—she has felt it crawl across her visage and give light to her eyes. She wore it the first time she battled a dragon, when her eyes met those of the great beast’s. She swallowed it down as she looked up for the first time to see a green hole in the sky, churning cruelly somewhere beyond her comprehension, but wore it when Haven burned and a darkspawn calling itself a god brought an archdemon down to face her, when she walked waking in the Fade and the embodiment of fear loomed above her, and even when a duchess asked her to dance. When people bearing names from tales she had refused to believe alighted before her. When her castle had been torn from the ground into the sky. When she approached the terrible and beautiful man who waited for her by a mirror. In part it is the expression of a death drive. In part it is an expression of fear—fear that invites and entices. It is the gaze of a conqueror who cares nothing for power for power’s sale and everything for a marvelous and inexplicable challenge, to do and know and understand to experience and to overcome. Smiling, Solas as a young man confronts what must be the limitless, the multitudinous, the sublime. He sees something that threatens to be beyond him and it exhilarates him and so truly and deeply Lavellan understands.

When the memory begins to flicker and fall away, Lavellan looks to the man next to her. Even without the familiar marks of aging on his face, his features, identical to the joyously bewildered ones that had just held her captive with fascination, somehow seem drawn, worn, and weathered. Solas closes his eyes and gives a sad, knowing laugh.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess the update schedule is going slower than I thought it would. Also, forgive me for a lot of typos/fucked grammar/clumsy diction—i’ll edit it out, i swear!
> 
> re: some things—I feel like the game is very unclear about when Solas got the title ‘Dread Wolf.’ It was stated that he earned it in his rebellion, but there are other things that imply it was before—like captions on statues where his wolf imagery was paired with Mythal’s dragon underground, and I kind of choose to portray it as if he got the name before.


	10. The Detour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dorian makes a discovery that gives Lavellan a new lead to follow, and an investigative detour results in Solas bargaining with his blood.

Lavellan rests poorly and draws herself and her bedmate from the Fade after perhaps only two hours of slumber. Solas groans and says something probably in Elvish that would be just as incomprehensible if it were in plain Common. He stretches and summons the will to say, “I seem to have forgotten that waking by you more often than not entails being _awoken_ by you.” He yawns and stretches again as and the two begin to adjust their positions and even though they had been together in their dreams he greets her with a sleepy smile: “Adahlen. Aneth-ara.”

“Aneth-ara to you too, Solas,” she hums to him. “You should go back to sleep if you want.” Lavellan has never been a sound sleeper and her dreams of cataclysmic nothingness locked away by malicious gods are overwhelming. It is more peaceful to wallow lazily in bed, watching as the dark of night gathers behind the rain clouds.

Lavellan is hidden away with her long lost lover in a quiet ancient nook atop a cliff over the sea. Decontextualized her situation seems absolutely idyllic and romantic. She tries to force her tired mind to lurk amongst the simple things for a time and takes in her bedroom surroundings. While Lavellan would be willing to bet money that Solas had no hand in the décor of his current lodgings otherwise, the dressings of the massive bed do bear signs of his personal taste and touch. The pillows that rest atop the mattress are wildly mismatched in almost every way possible—size, shape, color, firmness. The dressings of the bed include furs, silk sheets, and strange quilts with varied and mysterious patches of fabric that altogether seem too warm for the costal climate, even now in the chilled autumn rain. The place where Solas sleeps is eclectic and extraordinarily cozy and that seems ideal for a wanderer of dreams. Lavellan reclines propped up on a couple of oddly-shaped pillows so that she sits up halfway, but Solas chooses not to enjoy his own sumptuous collection of cushions. Instead he lays on his front between her legs and rests his head against her belly. With her right hand Lavellan alternates between gently scratching Solas’s scalp and massaging his upper back and shoulders. There is still a palpable tension through his body and she feels as if her touch is just barely holding his moribund anxieties at bay.

“Are we both stuck awake now?” Lavellan asks Solas. “Ir abelas.” She had always tried to speak more Elvish with him when they are cuddled in bed and she attempts to pick up the habit again. Bad grammar is perhaps more excuseable when lounging around sleepy and sex-dazed. Lavellan tends to understand Solas’s Elvish well, but in unfamiliar phrases her own conjugation and verb agreement is not particularly good—especially now that she has not practiced regularly in several years. Lavellan wishes she could return to sleep, but she is not tired—not in the usual sense. A fatigue has settled deep in her bones and the lingering effects of the Anchor noticeably pain her. Lavellan thinks that her body has held up admirably today. It has weathered bumpy carriage rides, leaps and hops down over a roof, and the strain of intimacy. Now it is paying its price. Perhaps she should ask to find food. Lavellan does not feel hungry but she is aware she has not eaten since the morning.

“It probably is for the best that we are awake.” With a levity that is still somehow dour, Solas adds, “But until we have a plan of action to find the artifact, I will be hard-pressed to move from this place.” He relaxes in to her clumsy one-handed ministrations, a deep groaning hum playing in his chest. In the Fade he had been so handsy, Lavellan thinks. Not that she is complaining, but neediness is odd from Solas. She wonders what his insatiable desire for her touch stems from. She remembers him speaking in the Fade about the false gods who would demand sex to prove dominance—maybe it is a power thing, as sex so often is. If it is the answer, it cannot be complete. Maybe she is hoping for too much from him.

From his sprawl over Lavellan’s body, Solas continues, “While I was gone earlier I arranged for my people to check black market channels for the sales of goods. I have a number of agents planning on going to illicit auction houses pretending to be slaves acting as proxies for their masters.”

Lavellan doesn’t want to divulge any further Inquisition activities to Solas and neglects to tell him that Josephine knows some eccentric nobles that they tend to enlist for a similar function. “According to my guards, the people who impersonated the porters were all elves. Do you think that’s significant?”

“It is possible that it is simply a monoracial group of robbers, or mercenaries, and we look for a conspiracy where there is none. Elvish spies and infiltrators have long since been cause for suspicion in your organization, so it is natural to notice this similarity and attribute to it some significance,” Solas says. “It is also possible that a larger group of peoples only sent elves for this particular mission…though there is no reason clear to me to do so. A human or even a dwarf could play the role of a Tevinter slave just as believably as an elf. Perhaps they actually are slaves. Members of the Tevinter elite will often train or acquire talented chattel to perform tasks requiring skill and coordination.” Solas pauses for a while and slowly exhales. He concedes with a grim reluctance, “But we must remember that The Conflux was long held by The People. That alone is cause for speculation as to whether or not the race of the thieves is relevant to their crime.”

“When I think about the whole scenario, I keep coming back to these bandits that attacked the dig site. The Inquisition found the ruin because our people followed them up into the mountains to break their base after they became a nuisance. Our force never found them. We had reports of their armor around the ruin where Serranus and our men found the artifact, but they had never broken the sanctum.”

“If it were the bandits, they could have followed the contingency headed to Clattering Keep and saw an opportunity to pick off a straggling group of porters and impersonate them. If they were camped at the ruin, it is likely they had been trying to raid its sanctum themselves for some time.” Solas goes on to venture, “It would make sense for their sponsor to be Tevinter. The Imperium was built on thievery from the elvhen.”

“Even if someone wanted to keep the magic that they thought might be in the temple for themselves, they would have had to come across the Chantry ruin at the bottom of the mountain at some point. What Tevinter would pass up the money, prestige, and favor of the Black Divine?” Both Dorian and Solas, Lavellan thinks, seem to really want it to be Tevinters. Lavellan thinks Dorian’s suspicion must arise from familiarity with the practices of his homeland, and Solas’s from his antipathy towards the Imperium. Regardless of what people want, the Inquisition investigators really have nothing. “I’m not saying it’s not Tevinters. Maybe they didn’t want to draw any attention to the area and were going to wait to excavate the Chantry. Or maybe they just didn’t know what they had there.”

“I am certainly not saying it must be Tevinters,” Solas counters. “Perhaps I could dream in the ruin, if you would be willing to tell me its precise location. The Veil tends to be thin around ancient structures with long histories. The spirits there will likely be able to give us sparse details about the bandits if asked properly: though what they notice might not be what we need.” Lavellan doesn’t like the idea of giving Solas the temple’s location, but it is probable that he will figure it out soon enough anyways. “I know you do not believe that our culprits are followers of the Qun, but perhaps that is a possibility we should reconsider.”

“The explosion was magic and lyrium sand-based mining charges. Why risk the danger of transporting lyrium charges and a saarebas when they could use gaatlock?”

“This is true. Perhaps Par Vollen is trying to obscure its involvement by creating a crime where it would be unreasonable to suspect Qunari. And the Qun does have the requisite skills, resources, and intelligence networks. But if the elves are Viddathari, it is likely they will come back to make a second strike on the facility—the fake porters were there for some time before they struck. I’m certain they would have found out gaatlock was being developed there, and the Qun will not stand for any other power possessing the formula for blackpowder. You should increase your security at Clattering Keep. If you would welcome the help I could—”

“—probably not. I think I can handle it.”

“You’re right. Such an entanglement of our affairs would cause needless trouble for the both of us.”

Lavellan muses longer on what she’s missing. The thieves had a number of incendiary devices—the baryta flash grenades, the lyrium sand charges. Had they just kept those on hand? The timeline of procurement and deployment makes no sense otherwise. She wonders what the likelihood is that the Inquisition can discover where the explosives had come from. “So. Since I have learned a lot about explosives as of late. Baryta is a common pyrotechnic, but lyrium charges tend to be hard to come by without a mining charter. Other than mining companies, the only types of people who tend to have them are high end mercenaries with black market contacts and Grey Wardens blasting in the deep roads to lay siege to darkspawn broods. Maybe the charges could have been stolen from someone who legitimately secured them, or they could have been bought under the table from a maker of mining tools, or perhaps bought from stock already circulating on the black market. Lyrium charges are dangerous to keep. They had to have been procured relatively recently. We could investigate if we could find the source of those.”

“It is certainly worth a try. We both have agents and connections who can help with the inquiry.” Solas takes a pause. Absentminded, he presses four or five little kisses onto her stomach where he rests his busy head. “The dead man looked sick. According to your guards, they apparently all did. What do you make of that, Adahlen?”

He calls her by her name again and it is not to scold or to sadden her and it’s so nice to hear, even when they talk about otherwise unhappy things. “I don’t know…I could get a spirit healer or barber-surgeon on Inquisition staff to anatomize the corpse we have and determine if the elf had any known diseases. If that turns something up, I might be able to figure out if any locales or, say, slave populations have reported an epidemic of the particular disease…” Dissatisfied, Lavellan admits, “This is like shooting arrows into the dark.”

“Indeed.” Solas hums and runs his fingers over Lavellan’s shoulders and down her arms. He traces her scars and the secular tattoos that she hides under her clothing. On her upper right arm there are a series of three cuffs and a waning crescent moon. Solas had heard the story of the piece from Lavellan long ago: on a late day in the month of Drakonis in her nineteenth year she had been part of a hunting party that felled a varterral. The hahrens had honored the brave hunters by bestowing commemorative tattoos. Somewhere on the same forearm just below the hunting trophy, Solas’s caress finds a stick-and-poke of an arrow piercing Lavellan’s skin that she had let Sera give her with pilfered pen ink. The way his head is facing he does not look to her truncated arm or the lines over her left shoulder, clavicle and upper chest connecting the embellished stars of the lupine constellation Fenrir. Like the rest of her body he must have seen it a thousand times. Solas moves his fingers from the squiggly little arrow up to Lavellan’s chin and stares up at her as he rests his finger amidst the green lines he hates.

At once Lavellan thinks of the face of the dead elf, dull and flat with a pallor that was not quite that of death, caked and crumbling dry like a thin layer of clay. Her eyes widen in realization and at just that moment she hears the dull ringing of her sending crystal sound out from the other room.

“Solas, can you get off me for a moment? I need to get my sending crystal out of my trouser pockets.”

Solas does not rouse himself from his position immediately. “I believe those were tossed over the couch?” He hums to himself as he rotates his body between her legs, slowly sitting up halfway. When Solas is half turned over he lifts an arm as the energized crystal zips towards him through the door to the bedroom before slowing and coming to a rest in his outstretched hand. How casually he uses magic for little things now is odd but unsurprising. Solas returns to laying atop Lavellan, but this time he rests on his back as he raises the crystal and offers it upwards to her.

“Are you trying to impress me?” Lavellan asks as Solas pulls himself up so he can rest his head back on her shoulder. The return of his weight and the warmth of his skin on her own body is so wonderful. 

“Only if you are impressed.” Solas is a horrible flatterer but she still smiles and turns ever so slightly to plant a kiss on his temple.

Lavellan taps the crystal to quiet the ringing noises and open the channel of connection.

From the stone comes Dorian’s voice: “You’ll never guess who made a brilliant discovery!”

“I could never guess. Maybe a team of dedicated researchers doing a double-blind study at the University of Orlais?”

“Come now, don’t be sarcastic. It’s me. Because really, who else would it be?” The magister pauses for a moment. “Where’s Solas?”

Solas adjusts his position slightly and leans his head back so that it falls tucked between Lavellan’s chin and the crook of her neck. She lets the bent elbow of her right arm rest over his shoulder where it is supported by his chest as she holds the crystal up to speak. Nondescriptively she answers, “With me right now.”

“Alone?” Lavellan does not like the inflection in Dorian’s voice.

“…yes?”

“Dangerous!”

“He’s dangerous when I’m with other people, too, you know.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” More furtively, Dorian continues, “I really hope you aren’t considering sleeping with him. My kidding aside, that could start all kinds of problems.”

“I’m not going to have sex with Solas,” Lavellan reassures Dorian.

“If she is considering it, I certainly won’t be obliging her,” Solas says.

“Oh, he’s right there with you! I thought you meant he was in the other room, or…oh, I’m too late with my advice, aren’t I?” Dorian falls quiet for a long moment, and Lavellan wonders if she should bother lying again. If she had two hands, she would clasp one over Solas’s mouth to keep him from speaking again. She suspects that the typically private elf announced his presence deliberately so that Dorian would know what had happened. Why? After a while, Dorian adds, “You know what, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”

“You don’t,” Lavellan answers with frustration evident in her voice.

Dorian sounds dead serious: “Adahlen. You know this isn’t good.”

“No, it’s probably not. So. What did you find?” she says.

“After the chaos of today, I couldn’t wind down. I decided to go to the Keep’s morgue to get a couple moments of quiet. It sounds strange, but it reminds me of writing my baccalaureate thesis, back in simpler times. Just little necromancer things, you know? Anyways, I decided I should look at the corpse again, see if there was anything I missed. And again, I was drawn to the weird, chalky face. But this time it was different—it was cracking, and not how dry skin cracks. There was something on his face, so I decided to get a basin of water and a cloth and try to wash it away. And that’s when I made my discovery.”

“Dalish?” Lavellan asks.

“Dalish,” Dorian confirms. A warped sigh comes from the crystal. “I’d be upset with you for stealing my thunder but I’m actually sort of embarrassed we didn’t figure this out sooner.”

“Once the idea of ‘sick’ got in my head…” Lavellan sighs herself. She supposes she should just move along. “You’ve already done so much, but do you think you could make sure someone has all of the fragments we can find of the explosive device together? Right now trying to find the person who made it and the person who bought it might help.”

“Perfect! So, something else that might help with just that: I just learned that the Iron Bull decided to come wait for me in that little town with the Crossroads. He contacted me about an hour ago. I didn’t disclose the location of the Keep but he did something where he cross-referenced my travel time from our meeting place with towns in the area and I guess some other spy things. Unless you have a reason against it I think I should ask him and the Chargers to come up to the Keep. He travels with the whole company. They have a demolitions expert and might be able to investigate the explosion better.”

“Go ahead and call him in. And if Bull can spare a few of his company to help the search, I would appreciate that,” Lavellan says. “Well, appreciate it and pay the Chargers’ contracting rate.”

“I’ll let him know,” Dorian says.  
  
“Thanks. I really owe you. If the world doesn’t end, let’s do a vacation together next time the magisterium goes out of session. My treat. I’ve been hearing good things about this week long tour of all the old gin distilleries in the Nevarran countryside.” Lavellan hardly drinks anymore, but she speaks the invitation automatically. She knows what Dorian wants to hear.

“Maker. The two of us and gin is always a disaster. I’m in. And Solas—even though everyone else seems to have given up, I still have some hope left for you,” Dorian gives a wistful pause, “I believe that maybe, someday, somehow, somewhere, you’ll manage to put together an outfit that makes you look like a sane person that lives on the inside of a house. Best of luck.”

“Considering what I saw of your situation, I wish you the best of luck as well,” Solas answers in his good-natured way. “I recall how distressing it was to me when I realized that my own hairline was beginning to recede. Good-bye Dorian. Stay strong!”

Dorian gasps when he realizes what Solas is implying. “Oh don’t you _dare_ , apostate. Adahlen, quick, tell me he’s—“ Before Dorian can finish, Solas takes the sending crystal from Lavellan and cuts the connection.

“...Remember how you objected when I called you evil earlier?”

“Someone had to break it to him,” Solas responds. He rolls over on his stomach out from between Lavellan’s legs to place the crystal on the nightstand.

“So. We know that at least one of the elves is Dalish,” Lavellan says. She takes a moment to look over Solas’s whole body once more as he sprawls next to her—she might not see him like this again. He is so gorgeous to her. Even his slightest, laziest movements animate his lovely repose in the most enticing way. She wants to touch him again, to run her hand over his back and down his thighs and feel the contours of his body—softened though they might now be—against her own. Dorian is right: it’s probably best that Lavellan doesn’t see Solas like this again. “Maybe that’s a lead.”

“How shall we approach this?” Solas asks. “On account of their superstition, I have very few Dalish agents, and most of them do not have much contact with their clans. Your connections might prove more useful.”

“They can’t be more than a few hours ride from the hold, wherever they are. There are typical places were clans camp. You know—good hiding spots. I think we have a few Dalish people who have wandered the area working around Skyhold that would know them better than me. I can get the coordinates from them and have some scouts in the area go and monitor the clans to see if any of them have the artifact.” It will be dangerous work. Many clans that spend most of their time toward Tevinter are especially defensive and subsist largely on the fruits of violence. The thieves themselves have already proved violent. Another idea comes to Lavellan, and at first she doesn’t want to suggest it. “It’s a long shot, but something just came to me. Dalish clans will preserve maps to ruins of elvish structures—typically Second Kingdom, but there are occasionally ones that supposedly lead to things from...well, your time. Historically, they’re swapped and copied at the arlathvhens so elves can go on pilgrimages to the sites, or so knowledge won’t be lost if something bad happens to the clan that holds the information. My clan has been in Wycome for almost ten years now. Because it’s the only stable Dalish settlement, the Keeper has taken to collecting a secret library of these maps so that any elf that wants to chase The People’s past can come to one place to find what they need. Maybe if the thieves were Dalish, they learned of the ruin from something in my Keeper’s library. Knowing her and the First, they keep meticulous records. If we have no other leads, it might be worth looking into.” When she realizes what exactly she’s suggested that they do, Lavellan abruptly stops. She quickly tries to think of a way to amend her statement, but Solas seems to like the idea.

“It is not so late. If you are feeling well enough, we can go right now.” Solas sits at the edge of the bed and stretches, extending his legs and arching his back. He rolls his head slightly as he suggests, “Or rather, we can as soon as we clean ourselves. I would prefer to not meet your family while smelling so strongly of sex.”

* * *

  
The two of them walk along the path of the in-between. They talk casually: he explains the system of physics and magic that allows running water in his baths. They had not washed together. Nominally they chose to do so out of fear that lathering each other’s bodies with soaps and oils would further waylay them, but Lavellan sought a few moments alone to gather herself and her thoughts. Knowing him he must have been doing much the same as she dried, went about the clumsy practice of dressing herself, and sent new orders back to Skyhold out of his sight and earshot as she had eaten a small snack of dried fruit and hard cheese he had left on a little plate on his desk ‘For the Inquisitor—I could hear your stomach.’ She is only ‘Adahlen’ to him in intimate moments, it seems. It is probably for the best. At least he has yet to call her by his favorite pet name: vhenan, my heart.

As they tread the floating tree-lined trail that will take them to a mirror in Wycome, Solas is not so touchy as he had been in the Fade but there is still a warmth remaining between the two despite odd and awkward feeling settling. He asks her to lean on him if she needs his help walking, and she insists she will be fine. It’s sweet. She wonders how the day has gotten like this and feels that at once she is doing two very ridiculous things: inviting the Dread Wolf to walk among the camp and inviting her ex-boyfriend home to meet her family.

“My clan is going to tell you all sorts of embarrassing stories about me. Until I was maybe twenty-two, I really was a wreck,” Lavellan says. She owes the fact that she was able to right her reputation enough to be entrusted with a mission like the Conclave reconnaissance in just three years to the fact that she is very likable.

“I am eager to hear what they say of you,” Solas responds. To go to Wycome he has for some reason decided to dress in familiar old clothing that makes him look a bit like a vagabond. Solas wears bottle-green legging trousers, a dull-colored and patched-up jumper, and a long padded vest. Lavellan finds it somewhat amusing he has changed clothes twice that day—though he tended to be diligent in keeping his clothing clean, he could go a week wearing the same threadbare outfit around Skyhold. “I make it no secret that I am not fond of the Dalish but you have spoken well of your clan. In some sense I look forward to meeting them.”

“It’s really not their fault that I grew into a wretched discontent,” Lavellan says huddled beneath her big black coat. It is bright like day inside the eluvian network, but now a brisk wind blows at the blossoming pink trees that line their path. “They’re good people.”

“For a city so full of The People, I hardly have any agents in Wycome. As I mentioned, the Dalish are nearly impossible for me to recruit—unless they are extraordinarily disaffected. In Wycome, it is difficult to find even city elves incensed enough to join my cause.”

Lavellan laughs. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” Rebuilding post-war Wycome from afar has been Lavellan’s pet challenge for years. In a month, Wycome will host the Synod of the Marches—a triennial exposition lasting two weeks in which the wealthy and powerful of the Free Marches and ambassadors to the cities from the nation states of Thedas gather. Wycome must make a show of its wealth and culture as well as throw a number of balls, including the Grand Promenade. During the war near all the nobility—along with the high society and intelligensia contained within—had been corrupted and exterminated by the Venatori. The city, now ruled not only by the commonborn but in part by _elves_ of all things, must prove itself capable of entertaining.

“To the untrained eye your hand is not even evident in much of the support,” Solas says. “I have been monitoring the situation and I am impressed with how you have counterbalanced internal tensions and secured outside investments. I did not think the city would last when I first heard of it.”

“Neither did I,” she admits. “Humans and elves living as equals, in large numbers. There’s a thing you don’t really see. As much as I would love to take all the credit, the people of Wycome are making great strides. Everyone remembers fighting alongside one another to take back the city from the Venatori, and the role that the elves played in the victory. Plus the fighting during the War destroyed a lot of the city, including the walls for the alienage and many of the slums there. Wycome didn’t have to rebuild on a skeleton of a segregated past.” This is somewhat of a propaganda piece. The peace between the races is not exactly tenuous but it is fraught with old misgivings between the humans and the city elves and with Dalish attitudes. Even though a majority of the city has come to support full citizenship for their elvish brothers in arms, few are comfortable with elven rule of the city. No less than three elves sit on the council of nine.

“Viscount Tethras’s trade agreements seem to have been vital in stabilizing the city. Kirkwall has raised itself from its rubble to become an economic powerhouse and seems to be leading Wycome to do the same.”

“Varric and I are doing our best,” Lavellan says. The city had been left in shambles by the war. Nowhere near as bad as Kirkwall by all accounts, but the chantry and most civil buildings had been severely damaged, and the infrastructure, especially the wells, had been utterly destroyed. She and the dwarf have spent the past few years securing outside investments into Wycome by highlighting the prominent position of old merchant families on the Council. Varric has offered other powers three-party trade deals with Kirkwall and Wycome. Lavellan has also managed to get the Chantry to issue loans to Wycome and put down collateral for other investors without appearing as if the elf had interceded to help the elves—she’d helped an eccentric old Mother with particular aspirations become head of the Chantry Treasury. The Mother believed the Chantry needed an Exalted Navy composed of ships and sailors from every holy city to combat piracy and sail to the four corners of the world to sing the Chant, and Lavellan had been able to lead her to the idea that Wycome would be the perfect place for the Navy’s home. As such, on her own initiative the Mother was willing to streamline the grants of Charity money to erect a new cathedral and to modernize and expand the docks in the harbor.

“I am eager to see how the city develops. It is a courageous and ambitious project that has had the misfortune of being born to the twilight of this world. You know well that peace lasts as long as prosperity does. Hunger causes suspicion and desperation makes people wary of out-groups. Humans are very good at finding ways to blame elves for trouble,” Solas reminds her.

Lavellan wants to change the subject. “So, how do these in-between places work?”

“It is difficult to explain. They are pieces torn asunder from both the waking and sleeping worlds, molded and imposed upon to suit their makers’ purposes. Such in-betweens inherently maintain their connections with the Fade and Physical world, but they interact with these only through conditions imposed by their creators—in this case, myself.”

Lavellan peers off the edge. She stares down and sees a number of twisting pathways. In between those there are places where it seems pure blue, filled with absolutely nothing. “What if I fell?”

“You would...hit another walkway,” Solas says in a flat voice.

“So what if I missed a ledge and just fell through the spaces where there was no walkway? Surely that’s happened to some elvhen lord coming back from a party a bit too late.”

“Well, this is a small enclave. You would appear at the top as soon as you hit the bottom, and before you made it full circle you would land. I’ve packed the space in here so tightly that it’s certain you’ll hit something once you start falling from the top.”

“In theory, could someone make one of these where you stepped off a ledge and fell forever, then?” Her earlier dream had shown her that the gods of Elvhenan were no more than petty tyrants blessed with magic prowess—not unlike Corypheus. But such a being having the power to create a pocket world apart from the physical one and the Fade gives Lavellan some sort of pause.

“No. Well, frankly yes. Rather, I should say in a sense.” Solas thinks for a while. “A person could create an in-between with an entirely unobstructed vertical path where someone who is pushed from a ledge can fall to the bottom and start once again at the top without interruption in a loop. But true perpetuity is not possible in either the waking or the sleeping world. Nor is it possible here—so to allow one to fall infinitely, this certainly couldn’t be a closed system and it would likely require some sort of maintenance or energy siphoned from outside. The in-between would have to be pieced together in a particular way to ensure the fall would last forever, or even until any sort of natural death. If there’s air in the room for breathing it’s likely a person’s fall would reach a speed necessary to catch fire and dissolve from friction with the air more quickly than you might think. One would have to offset the acceleration in some manner, or maybe continuously compel a barrier?” Lavellan lets her own thoughts wander. It seems daunting to think about, that the whole world and the world of dreams is in the process of slowly grinding to a halt. Solas seems to have gotten lost in his musings but wretches himself from the set of thoughts. Distaste clear in his voice, he says, “I feel like I’m devising some new method in torture.”

“I think it might just be a flashier version of being forgotten and left to die in a cell,” Lavellan responds.

“And that is torture.”

“Of course—it’s the new part I was disputing.” She’s joking. She thinks of Cole: both her friend and the mage whose last lonely, starving minutes the spirit had made calm and quiet. She remembers hunger as a girl, the cold quiet feeling and the heaviness of her limbs. But she had the world before her to drag her empty corpse through, dirt caking in her nails digging in the frozen ground hoping to find roots or grubs, and the warmth of her cousins’ bodies as they huddled in their litter under the same big blanket in their tent. She remembers the morning in a hungry winter that one of her cousins didn’t wake with the rest, and the long nights after that. The girl would fixate on the rest of their bodies shutting down, alone and awake. She felt that it was happening to her and she understood it was happening to her. She would think of holding those long moments before she lapsed into a final sleep, the big world hanging above her, watching in quiet. The idea of dying alone in a cell repulses Lavellan more than she could ever articulate even to herself. No grand exit. No big world watching. Not even the cousins to die beside. Just you and your body, slowly grinding to a halt. Again she wants to change the subject: “Isn’t the container you made for the Conflux entirely self-sustaining?”

“Ah! Yes!” Solas exclaims. He seems happy for her observation. “It is not my doing. The caisson draws on the nature of the artifact itself.”

“So that means—“

“So it seems. The gods who saw the Conflux as a mere weapon were fools.” Solas exhales a small sigh of frustration. “Though perhaps the two of us are fools of a different sort. We jump after suspicions and shadows just so we might feel that we are in motion.” He pauses. “I have been thinking. We have been proceeding guided by the notion the thieves saw a ruin from the time of Elvhenan and wanted whatever was therein. If our culprits are Dalish, it is entirely possible that they were looking specifically for the artifact. It is not so impossible some tale forgotten by all but one or two remote clans speaks of some object of great power hidden away by Dirthamen, or that a sleeping mage caught an errant glimpse of memory that called her to come find what might fill the blank space in her dream.”  
  
“You’re saying we could be approaching this backwards.” Lavellan stops to think for a moment and asks, “Do you think we could take a detour? I think I might have another idea.”

* * *

  
As always the Black Emporium smells like incense, dust, rot, soap, and perhaps apple cider—a vast improvement over the dank and pungent Darktown labyrinth the two elves have used to access the hidden shop. Careful not to step on any of the small pets that scamper around her feet and lurk in the dark corners where low smoke settles, the Inquisitor leads Solas to approach the desiccated form of Xenon the Antiquarian.

The voice of the shriveled mess booms from a magical device somewhere about the cluttered room: “Oh, my! Shoppers. We haven’t had two at once for a long time, no! Come, come closer. I’ve a bag of _spoons_. You can pull the first one for free, but if you’re unhappy with what you get, it’ll cost you a gold piece to put it back and pick another!”

“Maybe some other time,” Lavellan ventures as she and Solas enter into the main chamber of the store from its labyrinthine entryway. The Inquisitor has not been inside the Black Emporium in three or four years and takes time to slowly circumnavigate the room’s wares. She can only recognize a few pieces: most of the stock has turned over since she last found herself searching for rare and mysterious things. There are dimly glowing piles of cloth skeins heaped behind nude statues of Andraste and three-eyed snoffleur heads preserved in gigantic plugged vats of embalming fluid. Beneath a painting of Mabari crowded around a table to play Wicked Grace, there is a bookshelf which seems to solely house knock-offs, spin-offs, rip-offs, and bound volumes of original fan-fictions of _Hard_ _in_ _Hightown_. Lavellan stops for a moment to take a look at a large spiraling nautilus shell sitting in an opened trunk filled with unlabeled bones of various beasts. Amidst the jumble Lavellan can identify as parts of halla or desert phoenix, however, rests a skull that is clearly that of a dwarf—perhaps there are more people parts in the chest than she wishes to know.

Lavellan is drawn from her enrapt perusal by the Antiquarian’s greeting. “Oh, it’s _you_! And I’ve seen your friend here before with you too. Maybe once or five times, long, long ago. What are you looking to purchase today, hmm?”

“I’m here seeking information,” Lavellan says. She glances around the large chair that plays host to the centuries-old heap of bone and sinew to find Solas. She expects to see him wistfully staring at some little piece of Elvhenan but instead he is peering around a cage of rafters to scrutinize the petrified remains of Knight-Commander Meredith. Once a great symbol of power and fear, the woman has been reduced to little more than dull red décor. Lavellan supposes it might not be so sad. The legacy of Meredith’s works shape the world still—though perhaps not in a way that the templar commander would have wanted.

“Let me guess! You want to know about one of my other customers? No! No no no no no!” The Antiquarian gives a panicked cackle. “To some those secrets might be worth more gold than the sum of all my collections, but they’re not things I sell, no! I wouldn’t get many repeat customers that way. Now would I?!” He demands.

Lavellan meets the gaze of one of the Antiquarian’s eyes. It is the only part of him that moves, following he as she slowly comes to stand before him. “What if I asked about an object?”

The Antiquarian hums. “Describe the thing you’re looking for! As a service free of charge, I can tell you if I have it, or if I have ever had it. But if it is bought I _will not give you the name of the buyer_! Some sellers let me tell their tales to better field their items, but buyers, never!”

“If you never had it…would you tell me if anyone has asked after the item?”

“I suppose I can tell you _if_ it has been asked after. But not _who_ asked after it!”

Lavellan thinks that when she gets there, she can convince the Antiquarian otherwise. “I’m looking for a spherical artifact that resembles a magical focus. It’s dark in color and made of an unknown alloy, and is covered in runes that resemble no known script. It may have been described as a weapon.” She ventures, “It’s nearly impossible that you have the item. It was stolen from the Inquisition today somewhere far north of here.”

“Nearly is a good modifier there, my girl,” the Antiquarian cackles. “But no, I haven’t come across this item. I have had people come looking for elven foci a number of times, but never anything…so… _specific_!”

“It is likely that the person who asked would have come to you without a physical description of the object,” Solas interjects. Of course, Lavellan thinks. The buyer would have never seen the Conflux before—not even in the Fade. That would be impossible. Solas glances down around his bare feet, carefully tiptoeing through a scattering of books so as to avoid stepping on them. “This hopeful buyer would likely have been a mage. If they were not a mage, they may have mentioned hearing about the item from a mage—perhaps a Dalish Keeper. They would have said they were looking for a focus that felt strange. An unsettling, empty strange that would leave those nearby with a sick and hollow ringing—as if they were a bell that had been struck. They might have mentioned it would impact the dreams of those who slept nearby, and that the object would be at once hard to look at and hard to look away from. They would have associated it with either of the elvish gods Andruil or Dirthamen, or perhaps even the Forgotten Pantheon.”

“Ha! Now something like this I do remember!”

Lavellan almost jumps. Of course Solas would have a better understanding of how it might be described! “And you can’t tell us anything more?” Lavellan asks. “Isn’t it possible to—“

“Enough! There is not enough gold in the world to buy what you want!”

“But—“

“No!”

Lavellan opens her mouth to protest further, but Solas speaks first: “In exchange for a disclosure of information, I can offer you the thing you want more than gold.”

“Will I have to have the _golem_ show you out? He’s around here somewhere! I think!”

Solas walks around barefoot to place himself in front of the Antiquarian’s exposed and bulging eye that is not covered by a large tome propped in his excess limbs. “You have met me before—you admitted this much earlier. If I may ask, do you remember when that was?”

“Hmm…it was near ten years ago when you first came here with her. _Your Inquisitor!_ I have a perfect memory when I want to!”

“The Inquisitor has aged in those ten years, has she not?”

The eye of the shriveled man falls upon Lavellan, looking her over. It focuses on her face. “She isn’t what you could call a _spring chicken_ anymore, no.” The Antiquarian accuses. “ _Some offense is intended!_ ”

Lavellan wonders if the eye has to be misted with water so it does not dry out. Probably. She gives a little curtsy like the ones she’s grown practiced to giving before Orlesian courts: “It’s kind of you to say so.”

Unbothered by the strange answer, Solas continues on doing whatever he is doing: “Now. from the moment you first saw me, have I aged?” He adds, “It is true that I do not look young, but with your perfect memory, can you say I have grown older in a decade? I am sure you are cognizant of the fact that between forty and fifty, bone should begin to hollow from one’s face, and the quality of one’s skin should degrade noticeably.”

“What game are you playing with me, apostate?” The Antiquarian accuses Solas of trying to trick him, but his cry is not abrupt and instead is cautious. Solas has said something to interest him, and he wants to hear out the rag-clad mage.

Solas takes a few steps and watches to see that the eye of the Antiquarian not shrouded by his book has begun to follow him. For a long moment the elf stares at an astrolabe inscribed in what looks like Qunlat for a long moment. “Far and wide people know your tale, Xenon of Kirkwall—a boon from a Witch of the Wilds granted you eternal life but not eternal youth.” His words seem harsh or callous but his voice is soft and almost sympathetic as he goes on, “You now bear the burden of your wish, Antiquarian. You believed that you had triumphed over your mortal limitations, but such hubris always begets tragedy and you have learned your lesson well. There exists an absolute destroyer of worlds and it is not so simple as mere death. This destroyer is called time.”

“Time, and the decay it brings with it.” Devoid of its own booming clamor, the rasping speaking mechanism seems to echo even in the small and packed chamber.

“Most consider immortality an escape from death. But there remains a possibility that what we call immortality is but consignation to a much more hallowing and humbling end.”

The Antiquarian laughs, a wavering eye glued to Solas. “Ha! I could always tell there was something different about you than other guests. Especially ones with her! Perhaps I sensed a kindred spirit. Now! _Tell me your age_!”

For the second time in the day, Solas responds to a query about his age with a nonspecific truth: “I am far older than you, my friend.” He then goes on to look right in the eye of the slumped and mutated corpse and tell an outright lie: “I have achieved what you have so long sought for in vain: I have turned my blood to divine ichor through the art of haemotonomy and attained eternal life and eternal youth.”

Lavellan has only the faintest idea of what Solas is trying to play at with his feint, but it seems to have fooled the caught the old collector. Though the corpse seems not to breathe, a gasp comes through the speaking device. “How?! Tell me how you uncovered this secret! What do you want? Gold? I have gold! Socks? I have socks!”

“I think you know,” Solas says. In some sense this interplay is a strange thing for Lavellan to watch. All through their travels, the mage had been content to let her be the mouthpiece of the traveling party, choosing to relegate himself to the back of the group and stay mum. Now he commands the situation. It is not so different from his memories: in those he has certainly shown himself as shrewd and manipulative. But in another sense it is very different—the man Lavellan had watched in the Fade had been a gold-adorned demigod, a young and spirited trickster. Though he is always tired and sad, she supposes her barefoot old man still is the Dread Wolf, god of deceit. “In exchange for information about the person or persons who asked after the artifact, I might be able to lead you to the thing you desire.”

“Might,” the Antiquarian rumbles. Suddenly his scrutiny of Solas’s claim seems much greater. “ _Might_! You claimed you can stop aging. But if I look at you…you seem to be unable to reverse it!”

Solas has a calm answer for the challenge as he continues to stroll about the dark lit room. “Unlike yours, my form was healthy and able when I achieved immortality. The wear upon my face has not once cost me a woman whose affections I sought. Just because I have no care to reverse the processes of aging that had already befallen me, that does not mean I am not capable of doing such a thing.”

“Women...in such a way! There is something I haven’t thought about in some time.” The eye swivels over to Lavellan again and the longing in the leer is less lecherous than it is pained. Lavellan remembers a look in kind in Solas’s hazy grey gaze from when he had first demurely received her flirtatious attentions in the little shadows between the snowcapped cabins of Haven. She had not understood it then but she can see the root of it clearly now: Poor Xenon aches for some lost aspect of personhood carried in sex and sexuality. The Antiquarian rumbles, “I part with my gold easy, like water leaves from a sieve…but my secrets? Hmmm... _Here is a deal for you!_ You deliver on your promise! You must turn my own blood into divine ichor and reverse my aging! After that, I’ll give you the name of the one who came in search of your artifact.”

“I could not do that today, or this week, or this year. A scholar of haemotonomy such as yourself should know that blood of humans and blood of elves are inherently different—I do not know what unique challenges it might take to turn human blood to the substance which now sustains my life and youth. But what I can offer you today is a pint of ichor from my own veins—a tangible thing for your expert servants and contracted mages to study and emulate. I am sure you know that observing immortal lifeblood itself is the best way to understand its properties. You may need to wait centuries to have an opportunity like this again,” Solas says. His voice is calm and collected and it takes Lavellan a very long moment to realize that he is trying to swindle the Antiquarian out of his secrets _by selling his own blood_.

“You think you can just give me your blood and leave?! This could all be a lie! What if you age well, or use herbal balms or illusion magics to firm your skin? Ten years is not so long and I have no proof of your age!”

Solas sighs. “While we have all the time in the world, my companion does not. She is a busy woman. If you will not help us we will have to go elsewhere.” He heads to walk out and turns to Lavellan: “If I might suggest it, Inquisitor, we should not stay here.”

“Wait, wait!” The Antiquarian’s demand chases Solas as he begins to usher Lavellan to follow him down the causeway. “Come back! You have not aged one single day from what I can see. The fact you are so willing to offer your own blood.... _fascinates me!_ I like people who are willing to part with blood! And for even a possibility that you hold the anathema to my many centuries of suffering, _what is the name of one elf_?”

Lavellan turns in surprise, barely bothering to conceal the excitement spreading on her face. “They’re an elf!” An elf, like the dead man and his accomplices! It’s not a solid lead or connection, but it feels like something. If this plan works, Lavellan thinks, she might just stop hating Solas. Maybe.

The Antiquarian snaps, “ _Not now! You!_ I have little to loose and much to gain. I’ll have a pint of blood for the name and name alone of the person who asked after the focus.”

“Usually over a pint people tell stories,” Solas suggests. The little prod reminds Lavellan that where they are now must not be so far from their old friend Varric the storyteller who now rules the city of Kirkwall as its Viscount. If things at the outset of their adventures were to be believed, the dwarf was supposed to have been the liar in their little group.

“ _Trying to be clever!_ Ha! No! Three pints for a narrative. _A name is nothing!_ Stories—stories you can do things with. If I give you a story, I want more blood for more experiments!”

“Three? Never. I would be hard pressed to even consider two.”

“Two and a half,” the man says shrewdly. “ _You will be given a snack afterwards_!”

Solas sighs. “I don’t suppose I will be getting a better offer.”

Despite being immobile, some aura about the desiccated corpse seems absolutely jubilant. “Commence the bloodletting! Urchin! Men and ladies in waiting! Someone fetch the golem _and a syringe_!”

“—what? Golem? Is that…” Lavellan looks around the room and figures in the back seem to shift and doors in the wall pop open. From them come about ten people in white-colored robes. Most are human, but among the servants are a couple of elves and a rather short Qunari man with a broken horn. He hardly bows to clear the doorway.

One of the humans and the Qunari unevenly bear a large pink armchair with a floral print on the upholstery into the room. When they set it down in an open space before the Antiquarian, Lavellan notices that the pattern on the fabric does not quite hide little splotches of dried blood. To Solas the Antiquarian decrees, “Over to the big comfy sofa with you! _You will be pleased to find that it reclines!_ ” The Inquisitor thinks that whatever dignity the elvish pantheon had left might now be gone.

“I hope you know what you’re doing.” Lavellan looks over to Solas, who seems nonplussed by the situation he has now found himself in. She warns, “Two and a half pints is not an insubstantial amount of blood.”

“Among other things, I have watched you stare down dragons and archdemons and dive face first into tears in time and space.” Solas gives her a small grin that begins its work at weaving what’s inside her into knots. He rolls his eyes but there is something warm about it. “In comparison this is hardly risky. But perhaps this will go badly. This detour might solve two problems for you then.”

The Inquisitor shakes her head, her eyelids falling heavy. It is bittersweet to softly tell Solas, “Oh, shut up.” A golem that Lavellan could have sworn was not in the room before pats the pink headrest of the chair with its great stone hands. “Go on, you probably shouldn’t leave the golem waiting.”

Soon Solas is sitting reclined in the chair with the golem’s hands placed on his shoulders—in case he got up before his two and a half pints were paid, the desiccated man in the center of the room had explained. Around him stand a number of servants of the Antiquarian carrying perhaps too many bandages and tubes and buckets. One of the servants carefully rolls up Solas’s sleeve and ties a tourniquet around his arm between his shoulder and his elbow.

“This really is not where I expected I was going to end up today,” Solas says, echoing a sentiment that has been running through Lavellan’s head since the early morning.

To Lavellan’s great relief, the tray of medical supplies borne by one of the robed people carries a strong scent of antiseptic agents. But to her mild horror, after it is affixed to a long tube running to a graduated jar, the venipuncture needle is lowered down to the crook of Solas’s elbow and offered to a child of barely eight or nine with bandages over his eyes. Though Solas only expresses any possible displeasure he harbors by wearing a small frown, Lavellan becomes absolutely bewildered while she watches as the child tries to feel around on Solas’s bare arm for something. He lines the venipuncture needle up with nothing in particular, nowhere near his visible vein. “Is a blind child really the best person to do this?”

The Antiquarian snaps at the Inquisitor, “Do you have medical training?” Before Lavellan can even answer in the negative, he exclaims, “I thought not! _Urchin is more qualified than you_!”

Lavellan takes her own initiative to kneel by the chair’s side herself to guide the tip of the pointed instrument to the light blue vein visible at Solas’s joint. Her good hand is steady. Solas’s pale eyes catch the glint of a dull torch and they seem so warm as they fall over her crouched to aide the tiny phlebotomist with the huge needle.

Once steadied and guided for his lack of sight the little urchin pushes the venipuncture needle into Solas’s arm. The elf hardly winces, as the motion is smooth and aims true—perhaps the child does have some sort of medical training. Without titling his head towards her, the child siphoning the blood from Solas sweetly says, “Thank you, Mrs. Elf. My name is Jimi.”

“You’re welcome, Jimi,” Lavellan rotely responds. She supposes that even from the pitch of her voice she is too old to be ‘Miss Elf’ now.

Solas glances at the as the shadow of blood begins to travel down the tube. It bubbles like some sort of viscous wine as it makes its way into a marked bottle. His attention comes almost boredly away from the jar. “Now, Antiquarian, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Oh, yes, yes. Information about the one who asked after your artifact. _With a story to it!_ ” The Antiquarian pauses before he begins to speak, “About twenty-five years ago, I learned that an…unorthodox buyer was poking around, trying to find his way into my Black Emporium. Rumor had it that he sought out artifacts from the empire of the ancient elves. My eyes and ears around said he did not have money, no! Usually that is reason enough for me to deny a no-name entry! But I learned it was likely he could sell, or trade, _yes, trade_ , artifacts he had found on his own travels! I was intrigued and I had him sent his invitation to shop amongst my wares. I expected a seasoned adventurer of some sort, but instead the one who arrived was a boy of hardly nineteen, with fresh lines tattooed upon his face! I believe he was called…Ydhris. _Y-D-H-R-I-S!_ ”

“Did he give the name of his clan?” Lavellan asks. Finding someone by his first name alone will be hard, even for the Inquisition.

“No, not a clan. He had left his to be sworn to an order of the Dales dedicated to honoring the Elvish god Dirthamen. _A cult!_ Yes, he was in a cult and not a clan! But that is good. Cultists make good friends.”

“Is that so? I have found that I prefer to avoid cults,” Solas says. “If I can help it. Go on.”

“Networking! _Cults are about networking!_ The young man came in his first time asking for an enchanted pendant that a priestess of his god had been said to wear long ago. I had it, and he came to me a number of times, sometimes to sell his Dalish Kingdom goods and sometimes asking to trade for something connected to Dirthamen or his worship. Sometimes I would have it. Sometimes I would not. This went on for perhaps five or six years—and then he vanished! I thought he was dead and didn’t even think to invite me to his funeral. _Not that I would have come!_ ”

“Was this the period in which he asked after the artifact?”

“What? No! That was later! Much! Only…four years ago he came to me once more. One last time. He wore a cloak low over his face and his attitude was much worse, but I could tell it was him. I can always tell! That is when he asked me about the artifact you now seek. I told him I had never heard of such a thing, and with that he stormed out—just left! _That was all!_ ” The Antiquarian gives a very long pause. “Ahhh, I see the marker! It is at two and a half pints. _Give or take!_ Urchin! Withdraw the needle! Golem—let the man go.”

* * *

  
The two do not speak until they are through the eluvian, out of the labyrinths of Darktown and into the in-between. “And I thought you said you didn’t like to lie,” Lavellan teases. She hates to admit it, but she is somewhat impressed with how he had managed to convince the Antiquarian to part with his secrets—and how he had been willing to sell his blood to do so. She probably can’t go back to the Emporium though. At least not for a while.

“I don’t like to lie,” Solas says as he rolls up his sleeve to reveal a compress of plaid fabric tied by what looks like hosiery over the opening in the artery. With a little grimace of annoyance he undoes the ligature and removes the fabric and places his hand over the red dot. “But often circumstances require that we all do things that we would rather not.” When he lifts his palm, the puncture wound is vanished.

Lavellan quickly realizes that Solas is too tired for teasing. “You’re looking rough.” Her eyes run a tender sweep over his form and there seems to be a slight shiver to his motions. He seems so very vulnerable and so very mortal.

“Is that any surprise? This is the second—wait, no, third—time today I have parted with bodily fluids.” So maybe Solas isn’t too tired for teasing.

“Oh no. You’ve lost circulation to your brain.” A bad sex joke has come to imply to Lavellan that Solas is a little shaken, and she takes the initiative to lightly scratch his shoulder.

Solas gives a little laugh. “Today has just been long. I am just another mage who has bargained his blood for answers. You should not worry yourself,” Solas assures Lavellan as he tries to right himself. He tries to still himself to enjoy her caress and Lavellan notices that his breaths seem shallow. “I was, after all, served fruit juice and crackers after the ordeal.”

“And we got complimentary spoons. I should have said this sooner—you did a good job,” Lavellan says. Even if nothing turns up in Wycome, Solas has afforded them a lead. A cultist sworn to the Secret-Keeper called ‘Ydhris’ knew of the artifact and was searching for it.

“It was your idea to visit the Black Emporium.” He closes his eyes and for a split second before they shut, Lavellan sees that they are glowing. Solas explains, “It is not possible for me to instantly replenish my own blood out of nothing, but the spell I just cast should speed the regeneration. Especially once I have more to eat. When I came up with my plan, I thought I was going to be able to get away with only parting with one pint.”

As they begin again to walk Lavellan asks Solas, “How did you know he would take a trade for your blood?”

“Ah! I did not know for certain,” he answers. “The few times I had come to that place with you, the Antiquarian has been reading material relevant to his search for his lost youth. I noticed the book propped upon his limbs today was called _The Forbidden Sanguine Arts: Radical Haematonomy Both Natural and Arcane_. There were a number of other books on the subject laying about the foot of his chair. Since I have not noticeably aged in a decade, I realized I could pose as someone who could offer him his dream. I thought he might not hold his patrons’ secrets so closely to him with such elusive bait hanging right before his shriveled face.”

“And he was so desperate he took it even though he was well aware you might be lying.” Lavellan thinks of the poor Antiquarian, bound forever in his chair to watch himself wither. “What a miserable existence. So. Tell me. What is haematonomy?” Lavellan remembers that Thom Rainier had once described Solas as a man who ‘knows everything about everything,’ and despite Solas’s persistent claims that he knows little and is always learning new things, she has found the assessment of him to be fairly apt.

“Pseudoarcana, or pseudoscience—whatever name you wish to assign to absolute bunk. I doubt whatever so-called experts he taps will ever be able to determine that the blood taken from me is no different than the blood of of any other elf.” The reminder that he is just a man and not a god seems so much more natural now when he is wobbly and pale from bloodletting.

“Maybe some mage on his staff will cut their losses and use it for blood magic before it goes bad.”

That warrants a weak smile from Solas before he goes on. A rosy warmth is lacking in his normally flush lips. “There are a number of magical and non-magical schools of haematonomy, but all focus on stopping and reversing the ravages of aging and disease by fundamentally altering one’s own vital fluids using magic or alchemy. It goes in and out of fashion every three or four centuries—often enough that I thought I might look into it to see if I could find its particular appeal. I could not. Some schools have provided short-term cosmetic results,” Solas’s breath has begun to speed and continues to shorten as he goes on, “and some haematonomy procedures reliant on blood magic have stronger effects, but they all must be continuously reapplied and are subject to diminishing returns and rapid degradation of results. Often, the advanced procedures are so risky and have such a high rate of possession or madness that even in the Tevinter Imperium the practice is wide...is, ugh, widely...oh—“ He teeters on his feet slightly, and then in one short moment he blacks out.

“Solas!” Lavellan rushes to steady him, balancing his slackened form against her torso between her prosthetic and the firm grasp allowed by her real arm. In her hold she feels him moving, shivering and rousing himself as he relies on her for support. She hates how heavy he feels. She should be stronger than this.

Solas allows himself to lean dizzy and dazed upon her for just a few seconds before he straightens himself up. Despite her frustrations and the situation, it is nice that she is able to so easily touch him: earlier in the day helping him in such a way might have seemed a dangerous and delicate task. “My apologies, Inquisitor. And here I was the one thinking I would need to keep you standing this evening.”

“They took a lot of blood from you,” Lavellan says. “Try and breathe deeply.”

“Frankly I thought they might try to exsanguinate me. I was prepared to kill them all the moment that intent became clear,” Solas says flatly. “Though I did intend to spare the child.” He closes his eyes and follows Lavellan’s instructions, taking long draws of breath in and out. The casualness with which he talks about killing is so strange to her. Lavellan has killed before, of course, more times than she can count. No matter how heavy and sharp her bastard sword had been, killing effectively with it required intent, effort, and exertion. The same might go for the careful draw and aim of an arrow or the planned strike of precision with an assassin’s knife. Mages throw fire and ice, but it’s difficult and draining to conjure flame hot enough to instantly end a life straight out of the Fade, or to summon a cold so strong it can stop a person’s heart. But killing for Solas requires just a thought. It can even be involuntary. Lavellan remembers the Anchor and the power it had given her. She had tried to never use it on people, only animals, darkspawn, and demons, but sometimes in battle—it was just a thought. Just a thought, and a toss of her hand toward the sky. Solas pulls Lavellan from her sour reverie to add, “I am glad it did not come to that.”

Lavellan remembers what Solas had reminded her of earlier: he intends to kill them all one day. And he intends to kill her too. “Deep breaths,” she reassures him, and walks close enough to his side to catch him if he stumbles again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is all over the place, I feel like. Anyways, I wanted to get back into the investigative part of the story again and I think it went smoothly?


	11. The Homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To access an archive of Dalish maps, Lavellan has to introduce her ex-boyfriend to her Clan and family. Tensions begin to rise when Lavellan realizes that many in the Clan do not share her vision of coexistence and integration with human society and intend to take over Wycome, and Solas observes the controlling aspects of the Inquisitor’s personality with regards to her machinations in the city.
> 
> Lavellan’s family tells Solas about her embarrassing teenage preoccupation, and storytime prevents the two of them from heading to bed.

The carriage pulls to a stop. Wycome’s thoroughfares for carts and horses are not busy in the evening hours and the two elves have made good time across town from the eluvian to the Dalish borough. “This is where you’ll want to get out—the coachman is taking us the other way from here. The Campgrounds is only about a ten minute walk. This street should take you right to the gate if you follow it down. I think.” The drunken seneschal sitting across the cabin from Lavellan and Solas pauses in his unneeded directions as a hiccup forces its way up. Lavellan does not think she has been recognized as the Inquisitor and as such is surprised that a human had taken so kindly to two hitchhiking elves. The red-faced man continues somewhat clumsily but flushed with warmth: “I’ve been at the manor a few times for city business, and around the borough for some of the festivals. They’re not so bad.”

“A charitable assessment, ser,” Lavellan says as she adjusts the wrist of her prosthetic to brace her as she pushes herself up from her seat while opening the carriage door with her real hand. The inebriated official seems so genial and relaxed that the Inquisitor finds herself thirsty. Perhaps she wants to drink is because she nears her Clan—the longer she thinks about the people who raised her and her relationship with them, the more apprehensive she is to saunter in to their midst. She is supposed to visit in the next month, but in the presence of human dignitaries. Those would have kept her too occupied to reflect and worry.

The seneschal’s velvet-swaddled companion is somewhat less drunk than him but somewhat more anxious to carry on her way. “Erv! Don’t say it like that. The lady’s Dalish! …Oh, I wonder what your sister will say when we show up late to her celebration for you,” she scolds and frets as Lavellan slowly and achingly climbs out of the door and down the two steps of the tiny ladder onto the cobblestones. Solas follows her closely she roots herself in time to help him dismount. The two wobbly elves thank the human couple, who refuse the coins Lavellan offers as reimbursement for the ride. She manages to unload that money on the driver, an elf, before the two-horse carriage takes its leave.

Lavellan and Solas had emerged from a mirror tucked into a storage room behind a cabinetmaker’s shop in the town center. Though the retail had closed, the square had been thick with vendors and street performers vying for the attention of a crowd abuzz as traipsed between the inns and music halls in cheery groups. Their new locale is mostly residential. Though people seem to be trying to subdue the noises they make outdoors, the streets are lively—Wycome is a city known for staying out late. Even in the dark and the autumn cold people are crowded outside of taverns, chatting and japing as they puff at their pipes or rolled tobacco. Jaunty fiddle tunes float out of open doors and from cracks between foggy windows. She looks upon an idyllic urban scene: friends and happy strangers gathered together to pass a buzzed and slightly bawdy ending to the day. Some are in short-sleeved shirts or have their jackets open displaying a tolerance to the cold seems incredible until one accounts for the warming properties of drink. Lavellan remembers that Wycome has the highest alcohol consumption per capita of any city on the continent.

Lavellan surveys the compositions of the little groups that dance and play and joke together bathed in the light from the inns’ windows on the precipice of the dark of the night. There is a much higher ratio of elves to humans here than there was in the center of the city. Fewer of the elves wear vallaslin than Lavellan would like to see, and in her quick glances she does not recognize anyone from her Clan. The Dalish are happy to live in Wycome now because the halla will not lead them elsewhere—how long will it take them to actually integrate with the city? Despite her uneasiness with those who raised her, she has worked from afar to establish and stabilize their place in the city. They’d spent so long pining for their great metropole and while Wycome is certainly not glimmering Arlathan, it is a place where elves have full civil citizenship. They can own land, charter businesses, attend parochial schools, and hold office. The Dalish should recognize this as the closest thing they’ve had to Arlathan since the Kingdom of the Dales. From her correspondences with municipal leaders in Wycome, at least the city elves are enthusiastic about the new possibilities.

For now, there seems to be little friction between humans and elves in the costal polis. Solas is right that the current peace is dependent on prosperity, but economics are not the only factor fostering cooperation. While old prejudice and misunderstandings certainly die hard, Marcher independence has fostered a willingness in the humans of Wycome to eschew a tradition of segregation and fear in favor of solidarity and fraternity with the elves that had taken up arms at their side during the War. The danger elvish resentment posed to cohabitation had also been mitigated somewhat by circumstance—many of the authorities associated with years of persecution had perished with the corruption of the nobility and their replacements could disavow their predecessors’ actions with political impunity. And Lavellan herself has been working tirelessly from afar to pull the strings necessary to dissolve obstacles to cooperation. She will not let this experiment end poorly. Her people had spent so long dreaming of a world where elves could live proudly and flourish. The Dalish seem to be ignoring it even as it is in the making before them!

Lavellan only pretends not to understand why her people are reluctant to take to Wycome. She huddles under her coat with her bitter frustration chilling her further in the sparse coastal fog that lightly blankets the city. She looks to Solas, who walks barefoot on the cold cobblestone alongside her. Illuminated by the clean oil shine of the street light, he still looks awfully pale from having his blood drained. There’s a distant look in his eyes. “How are you holding up?”

The Inquisitor pauses with the mage when he stops walking. A single humorless chuckle spurts from his lips. “I have just spotted our trip’s first manifestation of Dalish superstition.” Solas lifts a hand clad in a frayed fingerless glove to point in the direction he had been gazing off. “Look. There, just outside the awning.” Following his indication, Lavellan peers ahead to the mouth of an alleyway. Under a hanging lantern, a stone wolf sits at wait. The grinning grey sculpture stands as tall as Lavellan’s shoulder. It seems to stare intently at the pair with its eyes painted in bright red.

“A statue of Fen’Harel,” Lavellan observes as she stretches to begin walking again. Her joints feel like rusted hinges. She offered so many trinkets at the feet of various lupine effigies in her early years. The fondness with which she would place her gifts is now sour and sore in her memory and she tries not to think on it. A question for her psuedo-deity comes to mind. “When the Dalish curse the name of the Wolf, do you take it personally at all?”

Solas takes a long moment to answer. “That is a question more difficult to answer than I first anticipated. The madman described in Dalish tale bears no semblance to me and next to none of his supposed mischief is my providence. Yet the myth is what the People have made my legacy. It is how I am remembered.” The two come closer to the statue and Solas opines as they pass it by, “The Wolf is placed with his back to where the People dwell, as his gaze alone is said to bring disaster. The Dalish do not want me here. Perhaps I should be more cognizant of that wish.”

The shadow of years of unhappiness and loneliness stretch out before Lavellan as she approaches the gates to the Campgrounds alongside Dalish history’s greatest villain. Huddled under her large jacket, Lavellan wonders if she would have avoided the strange homecoming if the had felt this trepidation earlier. “Has being unwanted ever stopped you from going anywhere before?”

“Misfortune will always find itself an invitation to the place it desires.” Solas bows his head and gives Lavellan a gentle and unsettling little grin. “Do not worry yourself—I intend to behave. While I walk among your people, I am at your command.”

* * *

  
No one lives in the great house of the massive estate at the edge of the city. Its sprawling grounds, however, are bustling and scores of huts crowd around the mansion like mushrooms sprouting in the shade at the base of a tree. Amongst this little village the halla wander and Clan Lavellan of Wycome lives. The hamlet on the lawns is separated only by the estate walls from other residential areas and is not so far from the markets or docks. and has become within the city its own discreet neighborhood, and the little Dalish borough has come to be known as The Campgrounds. Though it is insular and tucked away behind the estate walls, the Dalish subdivision is not altogether cut off from the pulse of lively coastal Wycome.

Though the manor does not house anyone, it is not disused. The Keeper who sits on the High Council uses its ballroom and dining quarters for entertaining political guests and the home has found itself in day-to-day operation as a center of government for the Dalish ward in which the often confused affairs of a people who had for centuries eschewed civilization are meted out.

It is in this capacity that two tattooed elves hunch over a table hosting piles of paper. One is a woman with long, wavy hair and dark skin. She wears deep blue vallaslin over demure and serene features and though intricate Dalish motifs are embroidered onto her frock, by its cut the pale blue tabinet dress she wears looks to have been made by a city tailor. The elf that stands with her is clad as a Dalish warrior should be clad, in traditional ironbark armor cast and detailed in camouflage greens. His red tattoos stand stark against his light skin and his straight black hair is tied back out of his sharp almond-shaped eyes. The whole of the man’s face is contorted into an intent scowl as he peers unhappily at the text on the charts before him. He mumbles something about ‘parade security’ to his petite companion as the two peruse the large diagram of the streets of the city of Wycome.

The Inquisitor watches the pair from the doorway for a long moment. She feels strange being back among Clan Lavellan. She stopped hating the People long ago, before she ever left but now more than ever, she knows that this is not a place that she should not be in person. Visiting Wycome is so much easier when she has Chantry leaders and ambassadors from Antiva or the Anderfels to cart around: she is not left alone with her people and her memories. Lavellan remembers that even now she has things to do and a persona to slip into. Her old friends expect certain airs of her and acting otherwise will foster worry and suspicion.

Without checking to make sure Solas is following along beside her, Lavellan takes a step back before bursting forth to make her entrance into the room. Her stride has a bluster in it meant to seem as if it carries a decisive and uninterrupted momentum that has built down the hall. “Well, look at that. You two are right where the fellows at the gate said you would be.” It isn’t the truth, and she hopes the two will find it funny: “I was told I would be interrupting something incredibly important if I just barged in, but I decided I would anyways.”

The elves at the table jump, and the woman in the pale blue dress goes wide-eyed and instantly tears herself from her work to rush around the table towards the door. “Inquisitor!” she cries with a laugh in her voice, flinging her arms in the air in excitement. “Andaran-atishan! I thought you were coming next month.”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’ll see me then too,” Lavellan laughs. She braces herself a little as the woman, short and slight as an elf should be, wraps her arms around her. Lavellan is not a huge fan of hugging, but the gesture is warm and welcoming and she uses her good arm to return it with a smile on her face. “Since when did you call me by my title, First?”

“You always seem so serious whenever I see you now!” The woman is beaming when she loosens her grasp. “This is such a wonderful surprise, cousin.”

“It’s been too long, Hellathen.” Lavellan has not been in Wycome for perhaps two years now despite her persistent involvement in the city’s affairs from afar. “You really should come visit me in Skyhold for once.”

“I wish I could—with all my duties to the Clan and the city I feel like I’m always so busy. I’m not just First, I’m the ward alderwoman,” an exasperated Hellathen exclaims. “Do you know how many holidays Wycome has? Forget about preparing for the Synod, it’s Founder’s Day next week. Every year that’s been a big blowout, the sort where the streets run with rum. All the alderpeople have responsibilities—issuing vendor license for the market, coordinating security with the City Guard…And then there’s the parade! I have to organize the dancers, and a float for the Clan. Plus our Warparty is on call with the militia, and the Council wants each unit to send representatives.”

“The Warparty is fighting over who’s going to march, aren’t they?” Lavellan asks with a sigh. She is relieved to see signs of the Clan’s involvement with the city.

“Of course they are. You have to remember the lot of glory-hounds we served with,” the armored man scoffs to interrupt. With some bad temper roiling in his voice he adds, “I don’t like the enthusiasm for this all.”

“They just want seats up front when their Warleader is given a title!” Hellathen insists. With pride in her voice she explains to Lavellan, “Kelleth is finally being honored as a Defender of Wycome for all he’s done in the Guard and the militia.”

“For leading the response team when bandits held Councilor Macadie’s family ransom, right?” Lavellan remembers the incident. Just less than two years prior, bandits had intercepted a coach bearing a wealthy official’s wife and young sons back home from a trip to Starkhaven and demanded an exorbitant amount of gold for their safe release. In her capacity as Councilor, the Keeper had dispatched an arm of the Dalish Warparty on a rescue mission. Not only did the elves quickly track the bandits through the wilds but on short notice ambushed their woodland hideaway to free the hostages. The news of a Dalish militia saving a human leader’s family had spread quickly through the continent. Upon learning of her relation to the Dalish heroes, many humans in Orlais especially had expressed to the Inquisitor that Clan Lavellan must be exceptional for the nobility it had fostered amongst the savages.

“Kelleth has done a lot,” Hellathen says. “He just refuses recognition.”

“No true elf needs human accolades,” Kelleth huffs. He seems to be in a terrible mood. In all the time that Lavellan has known him, he hasn’t changed at all. “Defender, Councilor, Inquisitor—“ there’s the dig Lavellan was waiting for, “—none of these titles should matter to one of The People following the Old Ways. I understand the Keeper needs me to attend the ceremony for political reasons. That’s fine. The humans can give me whatever names they want, but none will ever be cause for my celebration.”

The First looks between the Warleader and the Inquisitor as if a scuffle is about to start. It is fortunate that Kelleth hasn’t been able to properly bother Lavellan since she was a teenager. To her anxious cousin, Lavellan says very calmly, “Kelleth does have a point, you know. Being a Defender of Wycome isn’t that big of a deal. I don’t see why anyone should care—it’s not like you’re being named Champion of Kirkwall. The Wycome Council names, what, twenty defenders annually?” She glances over at the other elf with her eyebrows raised and gives a disingenuous smile.

“It’s only three a year!” Kelleth shoots back. He jumps and as he settles himself he clears his throat, attempting to dispell any implication that he is, in fact, prideful and flattered from the recognition. “Listen. I didn’t do any of what I did for Macadie, or the city of Wycome. I did it for my faith and for the People. I don’t like being here or playing the humans’ games, but Ghilan’nian left the halla to guide us in her absence and the halla have made it clear that our destiny is in this place. Perhaps we are being tested. I for one won’t neglect the Old Ways because the shemlen have dangled niceties before me.”

Lavellan wants to avoid any conversation that will cause fights, especially fights that might waylay her mission. “Hellathen, do you know where Deshanna is? I need a favor from her.”

Hellathen answers, “Right now our Keeper is at the Grand Hall of Council. She’s been working so hard with the Synod coming up…It’s fortunate that the upper floors of the Grand Hall have overnight quarters for all of the Councilors: she hasn’t really been able to travel back and forth when she’s been working late.”

“So her health hasn’t improved.” Lavellan’s observation is a cold one. As long as Lavellan can remember, Deshanna has had a cough that fluctuated with the weather and clime. At first Wycome’s temperate and coastal air had caused a marked improvement, but the last time Lavellan had seen the Keeper the woman had just gotten over a stay of bed-rest and gasped for air at the top of the stairs. The idea of Deshanna deteriorating bothers her more even than her own sickness. Lavellan had already lost her mother so long ago.

“Oh, no, it’s just been bad the past few weeks. Stress, probably. What do you need the Keeper for? If it’s very urgent, I could probably help.”

“The Clan still maintains the archive of maps to elvish ruins and historical sites, right?”

“Of course! When was the last time you saw it? It’s grown so much! I’ve actually been in charge of the archive for the past few years. Keeping such valuable information safe has been a blessing given by Sylaise, protector of the hearth and home.”

“And keeping a very good log of who comes to visit would honor the Secret-Keeper and his troves of knowledge, I assume?” Lavellan asks. Sometimes she forgets how faithful her cousin is—Hellathen is good-hearted and shrewd, but ideals of the old pantheon guide her mind and hand.

“And Elgar’nan, because that knowledge protects us. The whole project really shows the value of having our permanent home be here in Wycome.” Beaming in pride still, Hellathen asks, “What are you looking for?”

“That’s Inquisition business,” Lavellan says curtly, causing the smile on her cousin’s face to drop in disappointment.

“Adahlen. You know how important the secrecy around the maps is,” the First scolds. Long ago Lavellan had sent a Circle-trained archivist to the Clan to help the Keeper establish the library of maps. The mage, elvish herself with great sympathies towards the Dalish, had reported to Lavellan that the Clan had made her swear an oath that she would not speak of the archive, except to elves who might keep the same pledge themselves. “Some ruins may have treasures of The People hidden still—treasures humans would take from us at the first opportunity. You are one of us, but if you enter into our archives as an agent of a human power…that could jeopardize everything.”

Lavellan exhales and explains calmly, “I haven’t told any human about the archives, I promise. This is my own investigation.”

“Tell me why you need to see the maps,” Hellathen demands adamantly. Lavellan doesn’t particularly want to explain to her cousin that there is an extremely deadly super-weapon threatening the world, or that she intends to destroy an artifact from Elvhenan. The First isn’t going to budge, Lavellan knows, and she realizes she might want to think of her alternatives. If worst gets to worst, Lavellan can steal what she needs. Lavellan knows where the maps are hidden and she is certain Solas can make short work of the enchantments protecting the archives.

Still, the Inquisitor would rather not breed that ill will with her Clan. She proceeds cautiously, trying to think of an explanation that will please her cousin and will obscure the truth without being an outright lie. “The Inquisition recently found itself in the possession of an Elvish artifact. We’re trying to figure out if anyone has information about the item or the temple it was discovered in. There’s a small chance that if the archive has a map to the ruin, your records will be able to provide us names of people who know more than we do. We’ve been grasping at straws to find clues about this, so I’m hoping that vir uthdirth—the path of paperwork—will lead us…somewhere.”

“You’re not funny,” Kelleth says.

“And the Inquisition thinks this artifact is very valuable?” Hellathen asks. “If none of our people have been forthcoming with information already, perhaps you should let them have their secrets and give back the artifact. I know you are one of us, but you work for the Chantry. If it is an Elvish thing, the artifact and its gifts are not the Chantry’s to have—those belong to the Dalish. You should respect that.”

Standing back in the office’s double doorway, Solas breaks his long silence: “You lay claim to a legacy you do not understand.” It is a soft but firm warning.

This irks Kelleth. He looks the raggedy apostate over and in disdain regards the lack of tattoos on his face. “And you do understand it, flat-ear?”

A grimace of annoyance flickers across Solas’s face. He releases the brief flare of frustration with a light shake of his head and an utterance of “Len solaban telhalam ar him’thena.” Lavellan’s atrophied Elvish is clumsy and halting, but she understands the language well enough when others speak it: _The arrogance of children never ceases to amaze me._

“Did he call me a child?” Kelleth snaps. When Lavellan does not answer, he addresses Solas through clenched teeth. “Tell me what you said.”

“You have to ask? Do you not know your people’s language?” A bitter amusement plays in Solas’s voice. Of course he finds it funny that one who purports to protect the Ways of the Elvhen knows nothing of those ways. Kelleth seethes under the mage’s pointed grey glare: Solas has hit a sore spot. The Clan Kelleth had been born to had lost near all of the Elvish language and the rudimentary aspects taught by the elders of Clan Lavellan had been near impossible for him to gather when he joined them in his teenage years. Solas observes Kelleth holding back his snarl and in a sharp, calm way the mage begins to berate the warrior. “You claim to have such pride in this culture, and yet—“

“All right, hahren,” Lavellan warns Solas, “Now’s not the time.”

“My apologies,” says Solas quickly, much to Kelleth’s confused consternation. Perhaps the apostate truly does intend to follow the Inquisitor’s command.

Even without worrying about Solas alienating her Clan, Lavellan needs to be diplomatic here: “It’s not that the artifact is expensive, or otherwise valuable—we have reason to believe that in the wrong hands, it might be dangerous.” Lavellan will not disclose the scale of the destruction it might cause if she can help it. They won’t believe her and she doesn’t really understand it anyways.

Kelleth glowers. Solas’s rebuke seemingly forgotten, he insists, “Yes, the humans always cite danger to take what rightfully belongs to elves. It doesn’t matter if it’s Tevinter or your precious Inquisition: humans are holding something that’s ours and you’re enabling that. What’s next, the city? Between you and those templar women prodding around, should we have to fear for another Exalted March?”

Templars? Lavellan has no idea what Kelleth is talking about. And why is he referring to Wycome as theirs? She chooses her words carefully: “The artifact isn’t in Inquisition custody right now. It was stolen from us, but by whom we’re not sure. Right now we have reason to believe it’s some person with ties to the Imperium.” That’s not quite a lie—Tevinter malfeasance is still on the table. For all she knows, a magister hired a band of Dalish mercenaries to pull off the heist. It’s certainly a far-flung scenario, but it’s not impossible. It is clear to Lavellan that Kelleth and Hellathen will be less amicable to her if they know she and Solas are chasing Dalish culprits. “Whoever took it murdered ten non-combatants under the protection of the Inquisition. Even if the killers are Dalish people reclaiming their heritage, I have a responsibility to make them answer for the blood they spilled.”

Hellathen gives an understanding nod, and Kelleth exhales sharply but doesn’t return comment. She will one day be the Clan’s Keeper and he is the Warleader: they understand the duty a leader owes to those under his or her sworn protection. Lavellan continues, “Right now, we’re following every lead we possibly can. I came here chasing the small chance I could find some names of elves that know something—anything—about that artifact. Knowing exactly what the item does or some of the history of the ruin it was taken from might give us clues to who might have it.”

“Be careful, lethallan,” warns the First. “The traveler lost in the woods far from home is compelled to follow the first set of footprints she sees. She is so eager for direction that she does not stop to determine whether or not the tracks she follows were made by the hooves of the Pathfinder or by the paws of the Dread Wolf.”

Before Lavellan can formulate a response to her cousin’s religious adage Kelleth says, “You remember how she was, running off whenever she could to make acquaintance with shem wanderers and amuse herself with their heresies. We had to trade with humans to survive, and we now navigate this world because we were brought to it for some greater purpose. Blind to consequences she sought out the shemlen’s danger for fun.” He’s not wrong. “She’s always made sport of tempting Fen’Harel and has likely long been following his footsteps. Do not encourage her to chase the Wolf while a piece of our people’s legacy is at stake.”

Lavellan glances at Solas, who has closed his eyes likely in an attempt to not appear too irate. Had Solas always made these faces when discussing Dalish mythology during their adventures? He’s almost cute, choking down an expression of annoyance behind a tiny smile that seems at once forced and entirely involuntary. Maybe Lavellan should just inform her old friends that actually, today, she has taking the lead and the Dread Wolf follows her about. Instead of this draws attention to herself with a dramatic sigh. “You know, this might not even be a very big deal. We really don’t know what it even is that we’re trying to get back. After all the fuss, the artifact might turn out to be a doorstop.”

At her little joke Solas gives a dour laugh. “The shape of the thing lends itself more to the role of ‘paperweight.’”

The Inquisitor feels her cousin looking between the visitors, her eyelashes batting before pretty hazel eyes with curiosity. She is very feminine in a way Lavellan at times has envied. After a long moment Hellathen declares, “You both seem so tense. And Adahlen! You haven’t even introduced your friend. Andaran-atishan: we welcome you to this place we call the Campgrounds.”

“Oh. Right.” Typically Lavellan is better with pleasantries and introductions, a skilled and smiling intermediary. She hops to it: “This is my cousin Hellathen, First of Clan Lavellan and Alderwoman of the Campgrounds. She’s about ten months older than me so has been dealing with me for my entire life and most of hers. Growing up, we were incredibly close.” In contrast to her delinquent cousin, Hellathen had been seen as a good girl—yet she had always been the Inquisitor’s partner in crime in her more playful misbehaviors. “She was chosen for secession to Keeper for her magical talent, devout faith, and sunny disposition. What else? Oh, she’s absolutely infamous for being a better story teller than all of the hahrens and could probably give Varric a run for his money.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you at last. I’ve heard only good things.” That’s right, Lavellan remembers. During her relationship with Solas, she must have told him a thousand tales involving her cousin. The tired mage bows his bald head in a routine of respect.

Hellathen returns the gesture with a small giggle. “If you’ve heard the Viscount tell stories, you’ll know that’s not true.”

Lavellan uses her prosthetic hand to motion towards Kelleth. “And the gentleman dressed like he’s going to charge a picket line is Kelleth, born of Clan Tari, now Warleader of Clan Lavellan. Oh, and let’s not forget: he’ll be a Defender of Wycome soon. Kelleth joined the Clan when we were all thirteen or fourteen, and we hunted and fought in the Warparty together. He’s probably the most skilled and loyal warrior the Clan has ever seen.”

“Ir mirthadra’las.” Solas says as he and Kelleth also exchange small and terse bows.

After the pleasantry Kelleth affords the newcomer another bout of scrutiny. Apart from his bare face little should be objectionable about Solas’s person to a Dalish onlooker: from his threadbare but utilitarian clothing he clearly has eschewed civilization much like the generational itinerants. Lavellan realizes that Solas’s choice of his old hedge mage get-up was likely a conscious choice of disguise. The Warleader at long last says, “He must have a name too. What is it?”

“Hellathen, Kelleth, this is Solas.” Lavellan had given fawning introductions of her old cohort but she doesn’t know quite how to describe the old man. Solas had always been hard to pin down (she had always felt “apostate” as a descriptor did him a disservice) but these days he seems almost indescribable.

Lavellan thinks what it might sound like if she tells the whole truth. An honest introduction abuts on vitriolic in her imagination: _Solas is my ex-boyfriend, but you might know him better as the bad guy from your mythology. I know what you’re asking yourself—is Fen’Harel as terrible as he is in all the stories? No! I’d argue he’s actually somehow worse! He has two near-apocalypses under his belt and is working on another so he can finish the job and really end the world. His hobbies include being asleep, condescending to others, conversing with demons in the Beyond, creating ominous artwork, taking long walks through nature, and hypocrisy._ Well, maybe not that. For the past two or three hours Solas has been good. Disconcertingly so.

After perhaps too long, she pieces something together: “He’s an expert in ancient magics and matters of the Fade and the Veil, and is probably the only person I’ve ever met who is entirely fluent in Elvish. We’ve been friends for…ten years?” Lavellan describes Solas as a friend to implicitly vouch for him—from her remote dealings with Wycome politics, she knows that even when they act wary of her conflicting loyalties the Keeper and the First will rely upon her judgment. “Solas was one of the first people to volunteer his service to the Inquisition, which was a fairly bold move considering that apostasy was still a crime at the beginning of the War. Recently I’ve asked his help to find and, eventually, assess the stolen artifact.”

“It’s not often I get to meet one of Adahlen’s Inquisition friends—I know Viscount Tethras and Ambassador Montilyet, and then sometimes the mercenary company with the not-Qunari-Qunari comes through on business, but…fenehdis, is it already half-past eight!?” Hellathen jumps as her eyes are drawn above her guests’ head. Lavellan turns around to see an old clock built into the wood paneling above the door. The Inquisitor cannot believe that it is so early—it feels like ages have passed since her morning meeting with her advisors. “Oh no, no…I lost track of time. Mamae and Itan wanted me to eat with them tonight. I said I would be there for seven.”

“What, Mir’ana didn’t see you running behind in her dreams?” Kelleth asks.

“Leave my mother alone.”

“Tell her to stop saying she’s seen my death then! I don’t care if her premonitions never come true. I don’t like it,” Kelleth insists. He abruptly turns his attention to the Inquisitor. “You know your aunt has always been…off. She’s fully losing it. She talks about you a lot, Adahlen.”

“She just misses Adahlen, that’s all. Mamae and Itan see the rest of us all the time but never her,” Hellathen insists. She frets, “I haven’t spent an evening by them in weeks and they said they wouldn’t take supper without me.” How troubled Hellathen appears gives an ominous credo to Kelleth’s accusation that Lavellan’s aunt is in some way unwell. Mir’ana’s mind, Deshanna’s body—her own mother’s soul. The First interrupts her cousin’s line of thought: “Adahlen, have you eaten? Your friend too, of course…I think if you come along, they’ll be so happy to see you Mamae might forget how late I am.”

“Oh. Uhm…” Lavellan is ambushed by the invitation to bring Solas home to see her family. That’s a terrible idea. Never mind secret identities, even if he’s been fairly quiet so far, Solas is horribly opinionated and prone to arguments with traditional Dalish elves and even at her best Lavellan’s aunt is quarrelsome. Despite her aversion to interacting more with her Clan than she has to, Lavellan does feel some obligation to visit the man and woman who raised her. Hellathen’s mother and father are effectively Lavellan’s as well—as was natural and common amongst the Dalish, the two had taken in the niece who suffered the death of her mother and the absence of her father. To thank them she had been a difficult child and a terrible teenager and she feels like she now owes them a courtesy call. Lavellan, however, doesn’t particularly want to introduce them to her ex-boyfriend, even though she will absolutely not be announcing him as such. She figures she will let her companion decide. “Solas?”

Solas answers, “I would not want to impose.”

“It’s not imposing,” Hellathen insists. “Food’s not scarce here like it was in the wild, and Mamae still cooks like she has our five mouths to feed.”

Though the mage stands steady now Lavellan fears that he might falter at any moment. Mere hours ago she had cursed his immortality and now she finds herself regarding Solas with great tenderness. She thinks she sees his lips give a delicate tremble as she suggests, “You really should have something to eat.” Her suggestion to him comes in somewhat of a whisper and he looks away almost bashfully. Solas knows he should have something more than the snack he had been given as a courtesy. Her worry outweighs her considerations. “You know what? We’re doing family dinner.”

* * *

They make their way across the little village of the Campgrounds. Though most of their horned ilk stay at pasture a couple halla follow them between the little huts and through bright lantern-lit openings where Dalish elves bundled in hide and woven cloth are winding down the chill autumn evening about fire-pits. Some are roasting chestnuts or mulling cider or wine over the flames, chatting idly about the upcoming parade or how it feels like there’s rain in the air. Amidst the Dalish there are a handful of barefaced elves and the occasional human. Lavellan is at first confused by how many of the elves she does not recognize. She supposes she shouldn’t be surprised. Since Clan Lavellan’s settlement, the halla have brought three clans now to join them in Wycome. The happenstance is strange enough for Lavellan to begin to understand why some elves considered the migration to be part of some heavenly plan. The influx makes Lavellan uneasy: soon it may be too much for the humans’ liking.

Some elves greet Lavellan or her cousin in passing, and a handful extend brief introductions to Solas. Most of them express pleased surprise about how well Lavellan seems to be doing, as if she hadn’t straightened up her act for a solid three or four years before she left, or for that matter, as if she hadn’t essentially been running the entire continent for the past decade. She supposes her misspent youth was far more memorable than the settlement into stability that marked her early twenties. They think of her as a seventeen year old slinking back into camp drunk and bruised after two days gone, not as a young adult the Keeper and former Warleader had tasked with averting conflicts between the Clan and the human civilization of which their wanderings brought them to the cusp. Even in those years many in the Clan had whispered where she could still hear them: Does she really have to bring their books here? She’s still trouble. Now they tell the Inquisitor that her if her mother could see her, she would be proud. She has one such typical exchange with a short man carrying a large stack of ironbark shields under his arm. He stops to wave at her, his lopsided load sliding from his grasp. For a moment in the lamplight, Lavellan doesn’t recognize one of her old compatriots from the Warparty.

“Aneth-ara, you!” the little man says.

“Nithas? I didn’t recognize you without the mullet, lethallin.”

The short man laughs and lets down the shields to lean against his leg. Once stilled, he peers at Lavellan to get a better look at her. For a moment he seems scornful of her ascot and corseted vest even though he is wearing a belt with a popular Orlesian style of buckle on it himself. “Creators, I didn’t want to believe it: the shemlen really have changed you. It’s dark and you’re still sober enough to stand upright?”

Lavellan returns a laugh. “Well, you know how humans are. They don’t even let me keep my Old Ways.”

“And after everything, that’s the worst they’ve done to you? I’ve been watching joust at the Downs lately. Come pick out some knights for me with your luck—you gambled with the Wolf and won,” he jokes. It is uncouth but good-natured: as most elves of her own age, he does like her. Once she had overcome her worst tendencies her reputation as a misfit had led others to trust her with their own unorthodoxies. In some sense these odd confidances had prepared her for later challenges: connecting with her operatives on a personal level to motivate and direct their service had been a major secret strength of the Inquisitor. “I need to head home—Mihai’s too young for training, but he’s been begging for swordplay lessons.” Lavellan assumes Mihai is Nithas’s son. “I promised I’d show him a few basics before the children have to go for evening story tonight. But I’ll see you around later in the week?” he asks as he gathers his shields.

“Probably not. We will catch up next month when I’m here for the the Synod. I swear.” As she bids the man goodbye she wonders how many in the Clan genuinely believed that her conduct had courted a malevolent deity’s attention and how many used the Dread Wolf as a euphemism for the end of her self-destruction that had befallen her mother before her. Though he eventually intends to do so, Fen’Harel doesn’t seem too intent on dragging her to oblivion at the moment. Instead he is focused on the decorated huts that have replaced the Dalish tents at the Campgrounds over the past decade. The dwellings sit atop low wooden decks and their outer walls are painted brightly with geometric patterns or scenes from nature or mythology. Solas seems to appreciate these murals, regarding the more abstract ones with great interest. As the three wind through the little village he ventures to opine, “These grounds are massive. I am surprised to see such an estate in an urban area.”

“Three or four hundred years ago this was a country estate outside the city limits, and when Wycome expanded it had to grow around it. When Ghilan’nian lead us to Wycome, Syliase presented us with a home. The noble family that lived in the manor fell victim to corruption by Venatori agents and either died fighting against the city’s liberation or grew too ill to be saved. As a gift for fighting alongside the people of Wycome, the family who inherited the land offered us this place so long as the halla bid us to stay,” Hellathen explains. Some of the homes they pass by are abutted by hutches of rabbits and coops of chickens and thick-bodied geese. A few goats stray about in pens as well—the amount of small-scale husbandry is impressive. The Dalish have always herded halla, but the proliferation of livestock is new. “Even bound away from this world, the Creators truly do find agents for their wills.”

Lavellan anxiously rubs her shoulder with her good hand. Her prosthetic arm is getting heavy and her body is starting to get a little sore. “This used to be used for pasture—the gentry who lived here for generations bred horses on the land. Unless something’s changed since I was last here, the Clan hasn’t razed the stables. They’re an armory and a feed pile for the halla now, which isn’t exciting, but the building has impressive stonework. There’s also a pretty good orchard somewhere around here. Though I suppose you must have a pretty high standard for trees.”

“And such a valuable and esteemed estate was given to the Dalish as their home in the city?” Solas asked. “Even with the trust fostered in the War…”

Hellathen walks ahead of the two visitors talking to a pack of young hunters about the logistics of transporting the remains of a sylvan out of the wooded hills to the town’s west and back to the Campgrounds for use in craft. Though the way they refer to Hellathen indicates they are of her Clan, Lavellan does not recognize the teenagers: their vallaslin is fresh and they would have been only six or seven when she departed. While Hellathen is occupied, Lavellan drops her voice so only Solas can hear to correct some errors in Hellathen’s story: “The old owners’ heirs in Ostwick got a pleasant surprise when they found out the title of the estate they inherited was laden with debt to the Chantry worth more than twice the property value—which is considerable on account of its size and location. When they couldn’t get anyone to take the place off their hands, they petitioned the Chantry for relief. That’s how I first heard about this place.”

Solas seems amused by that and catches her implication: “The Dalish here don’t know that the Chantry owns the land, do they?”

“The Keeper does because she’s on the Council and privy to information. I asked her not to let the Clan know. Since they won’t leave Wycome until the halla do, she’s content to let them all think it’s a gift from impressed nobles.” Lavellan does not want the Clan to know that she had deliberately placed the Clan within city limits in a place where the halla might grow complacent. They will think she is forcing things. Not all of the Dalish live at the Campgrounds, she reminds herself. More and more of the elves, especially the young ones with crafting skill, are moving into the city. Some of other clans who had subsisted primarily on swidden agriculture are claiming and tending to small patches of land just outside the village left abandoned and unclaimed by the war. Though she is facilitating them, these things are happening naturally.

They’ve all but stopped walking as Hellathen continues to speak with the old woman who has absconded into the doorframe of her home. Lavellan’s voice is barely more than a mumble as she continues, “Getting the Chantry to discharge the full debt in exchange for the estate was easier than I thought it would be, even in the aftermath of the war. The Chantry didn’t believe they’d ever get anything they were owed back and even locally the Mothers are content to let the Dalish sit on the land at my request. The family from Ostwick was the sort with a title but little gold and would have never paid off what they owed. They were so happy that I let them herd off the horses for themselves that they agreed to give the Chantry a cut every time they took their stock to auction.”

“You are proud of your talents as a negotiator.” He wears a soft and knowing smile.

“Usually I am,” Lavellan admits. “I wish I could say I came about it naturally. Trial and error figuring out how to bargain with humans for these people nearly got me killed more than once, and with the Inquisition…if Josephine hadn’t been there to teach me and support me there would have been some sort of disaster. It seems almost easy until a day like today.” The impossibility of doing anything other than conceding to Solas still grates on her.

“You are endlessly adaptable: that is one of your great strengths. I often think on the immense luck that provided that wsomeone with your flexibility and capacity was the one who happened upon the Anchor at the Conclave.”

“You’re a terrible flatterer.” Lavellan sighs and looks to the sky. Beyond the smoke it’s not quite as dark as it is in Skyhold, even with the faint glow of the scar left by the Breach hanging over the Frostbacks. “When I arrived at the Conclave I could hardly even comprehend the enormity of what I was walking into. I spent my whole journey so terrified but so excited that by chance I might actually speak with a to a real Chantry mother or templar lord and just touch the powers looming just outside my little Dalish world.” Lavellan looks up into the sky, clear beyond the hanging web of dissipating smoke from all the fires of the camp. The light of the city has drowned out some of the fainter stars. “If someone would have told me when I was twenty that this is what my life would be in fifteen years I would have thought them mad.”

“Notwithstanding your disbelief, you would have found it vindicating.”

“I suppose it all seems so small to you.”

“No. Not at all.”

“Sorry this turned into a meet-the-parents. Sort of. If you want the genuine article, I guess we could hunt down my father’s Clan.”

“Ha, no need. This is much less daunting than any priot visit to the homes of old girlfriends’ families.” Some part of Lavellan is curious about the love life of a diety in Arlathan. During their relationship Solas had given her some details of his personal history that somehow made much more sense in their new context—in particular she remembers him offhandedly expressing how he found group sex to be ‘a dull and often sordid social obligation’ and then refusing to elaborate. Lavellan realizes that Solas has never told her the names of any former lovers. Had he become their deaths? Solas notices that Lavellan looks upon him and somewhat hastily explains, “There is no ceremony and pretense for an unannounced call by an apostate.”

She wonders if she will ever have the chance to really, truly get to know Solas. Probably not, and it shouldn’t matter. They have a mission. Lavellan thinks of the name the Antiquarian had given her: Ydhris. It is a more concrete lead to follow than their current mission and perhaps it is one they should be chasing. Lavellan plans to contact Inquisition intelligence in Val Royeaux to have Charter begin a search for the mysterious cultist. What if she sees the name in the archival logbook? The possibility is a different one, but it excites her.

Though she had last been to Wycome before its construction, Lavellan can identify the structure her aunt and uncle live in as they approach through a throng of languidly wandering halla. In the bright light of lanterns that sit atop posts at the corner of the hut’s low deck, the Inquisitor can see that the outer walls of the hut are engraved with highly stylized depictions of bees and other motifs and symbols associated with June, the god of craft they both set aside for especial worship. Her aunt’s horticulture is evident at the site: a small hanging garden of climbing plants is suspended from the side of the home on a net rife with chayote and the vines of groundnuts. It descends over a little garden beside the deck, which itself is host to pots of herbs. Tanning hides from her uncle’s craft as an armorer hang on racks beside the deck, and a large clay oven likely communal to the cluster of homes billows sparse smoke into the dark sky to keep its contents—presumably supper—warm. Lavellan wonders how the house on the deck is constructed and imagines that it is, technically speaking, portable.

The visible lattice support structure of the walls inside of the home confirms Lavellan’s suspicion that the house is designed to be collapsible. Old habits die hard. The interior of the large yurt is warm and lit by a number of hanging enchanted baubles. The space is bigger but far more cozy than the tents Lavellan remembers growing up within and the single large room smells faintly of incense. In the comfortable but fragrant air the parental scolding immediately directed at Hellathen falls off as soon as the home’s two inhabitants, bondmates Irakli and Mir’ana, see the Inquisitor. Lavellan’s aunt rushes to fuss over her, trying to pick at and right her hair while Lavellan tries to draw back without being offputting. “I had a dream you might come, da’len. Another premonition come true!” The excitement in her voice and surprise on her face seems to contrast her suggestion of foresight. The tattoos on her dark skin are a deep but worn orange and her frizzy black hair, just now beginning to show signs of greying, falls into a low bun. She smiles a placid smile that is weighted with fatigue. “This time it’s one of the happy ones.” Lavellan’s aunt and uncle tell her they will never be used to the prosthetic, that they are proud, that they wished her mother was still around to see her. These are things the Inquisitor has heard before. She introduces them to Solas, her friend and colleague, and before long the three visitors to the little hut are all ushered to the floor to sit on a woven rug at a low table while Lavellan’s aunt rushes outside to the oven to at long last put dinner on the table.

Lavellan’s aunt and uncle like Solas, sort of. She can tell that they think he is odd. Watching him interact socially is strange. It has been several years since she has seen him or spoken to him, though she has thought of him constantly every day. She had nearly forgotten that most people consider him strange and difficult to talk to. Perhaps it is strange that she finds him so perfect and magnetic. It surprises her more that people call him quiet—he never shuts up once you get him to start talking. She likes that sometimes. Her aunt has without asking for his input poured him tea (one of the things she does like about living amongst humans, she explains, is the easy access to tea leaves from all across the continent). Amidst the conversation, he politely pretends to drink it before using a lapse in attention on him to tip it quietly into the planter at the base of a houseplant nearby. Lavellan sees, but apparently no one else does.

“Oh, you’ve drank all your tea. Do you want more with your dinner, lethallin?” Her aunt asks. She seems more attentive and frantic than usual and dark circles wax under her eyes.

“No thank you,” Solas says. “If I have any more, I will be up all night.”

“How about something stronger for either of you? I have rum from the city market.”

“I didn’t know you drank.” Lavellan notices that the bottle her aunt holds is not a jug of clay holding the traditional fruit or sap wine fermented by the Dalish but instead a bottle of spiced rum from a Rivaini distillery. “I’ll pass,” Lavellan says.

Mir’ana takes three glass cups from the shelf to set out and uses magic to chill them before pouring two fingers of rum in to each. “We should give praise to the Creators before we eat.”

Hellathen bows her head to lead the grace. “Bless us Sylaise, with our home and fire, and Andruil, with the bounty of the wood. Even now, in your absence, your power makes manifest these gifts created for us. From your hands we eat our fill: with this meal, as with all meals, we remember.”

Lavellan watches a corner of Solas’ mouth twitch in likely some strange mixture of bemusement and dull annoyance as Hellathen adds: “And may the Dread Wolf not turn his gaze upon our Clan or on our family so we may partake in peace.”

They ladle rabbit stew into bowls and use big spoons. Solas, typically a rather slow eater with a moderate appetite, is very quick to take down his food. When he nears the bottom of his bowl Lavellan’s aunt serves him another helping before he can ask.

Her aunt, one of her mother’s sisters, is a mage of meager but honed skill who has for years served as the Clan’s Master Herbalist. Some of the humans of Wycome have taken to purchasing her draughts and two days a week she sells them in the market. Mir’ana is not a bad person but is fussy and catty, concerned with convention and the odd Dalish notions of propriety. Though she appears taut and off-kilter she does not seem quite so insane as Kelleth had alluded.

Lavellan’s uncle Irakli is a craftsman who fashions armor for hunters, warriors, and now the Dalish militia and guard out of ironbark and other material. She is not related by blood to him but has always been closer to him than she has her aunt. Even at her most disagreeable she had never held antipathy for him. Now his hair has turned entirely from jet black to grey, the new softness of the color strange with his striking purple tattoos. He cares for little but his craft and his family and like Solas is somewhat quiet—Lavellan had been made to urge the two of them to conversation. Eventually her uncle voluntarily rises to retrieve his hobby pieces from a small chest. He shows his niece and her guests the trinkets and jewelry he has made from odds and ends like shed halla horn and sylvanwood scrap. He takes pride in his little crafts and Solas seems earnest in his compliments of the intricacies of the pieces.

Solas asks questions to the elves. “How do you justify this? After centuries of wandering you are settling down.” Lavellan carefully and nervously watches him as she stirs the stew of rabbit and root vegetable in her bowl. The broth is red and aromatic, bearing the strong scents of herbs and spices.

“You heard Kelleth speak of it,” Hellathen says. “The halla led us here, and they led the other Clans here. They’re biding us to gather and stay. Ghilan’nian is bringing us here—though she is locked away she acts through her instruments.”

Lavellan’s aunt stirs her food cautiously with her big spoon. She seems to be displeased with her own cooking and has not eaten much. “Years and years have all made sense. The halla have taken Clan Lavellan close to humans for years. We could hardly go for a year without running up on some village. We had to learn their customs enough to trade with them for vital supplies. We had to learn diplomacy, how to pass in peace. And we had to reassess our relationship with the Old Ways—what remembrance was and what our role should be.”

“Whatever may come, we are prepared for it,” Irakli says. “Some say it is a new beginning, and perhaps it is.”

“You think Wycome will be a new Arlathan,” Solas ventures.

“If the Creators will it,” Hellathen says. Some think that staying here threatens to corrupt the Old Ways. They point to people moving from tents to houses and tenements in the city as signs that we grow lax in our faith. There are dangers posed in the conversion. But they forget our itinerancy was forced upon us, and migrants cannot pay homage to a great civilization. We must honor the legacy we have been entrusted by our ancestors, and we have been a great opportunity to do so here.” Lavellan is glad to see some sense from her cousin.

“What does it mean to ‘honor the legacy?’”

“To create a city that follows the Old Ways, ruled under Mythal’s patience and providence. More and more clans are being led here by the halla. When the population becomes large enough we can write laws that comply to the ancient codes. The city is half elves now, you know.” The First sounds very proud of this fact and Lavellan begins to think she should take back her earlier thought about sense. “Some among the Clan think that we should not suffer humans to be here once the population grows enough. They say the All-Father demands his revenge I do not wish to drive the humans here from their homes as some think we should: we fought beside them in the war and have spent this past decade growing and rebuilding side by side.”

“Save that for your little pep speeches, da’len,” her mother warns, “while we are meant to be in Wycome, you know that we will never truly be at accord with the humans here. We must not misplace our faith with them, but hold fast to the Old Ways to stay upon our path.”

“Without the Old Ways, we are lost,” agrees Hellathen. “If the city is to rightfully be ours, Mythal’s justice and equity must guide our hands. Adahlen, you’ll be helping, right?”

“I don’t suppose you’ve told the city elves your plans to overrun Wycome?” the Inquisitor asks instead of answering. Hellathen has neglects to mention that the vast majority of the population of elves of Wycome are not Dalish and care nothing for the Old Ways. The way her aunt and cousin talk is disturbing and precisely the sort of rhetoric that might create a schism between elves and humans. “Just wondering.”

“We’re not going to overrun anything, but gradually—“

“—such a strange people, the city elves,” her uncle mumbles. “You hear those flat-eared ones call their elders hahren or string together a few words of our language… You think they follow the Old Ways for a moment, then you realize they worship at the Chantry. It must be sad to practice a faith in duress.”

Lavellan’s aunt prods, “Adahlen, you’ve been working for the Chantry for so long, you haven’t begun to believe—“

“Of course I haven’t. Remember, I only ever learned the Chant to charm all the pretty missionary sisters that came to convert us. Why would my priorities change?” Lavellan keeps her tone deliberately flippant. Her aunt winces, but none of the Clan had ever minded her relationships with human women—those liaisons were far less risky than relations with human men.  
  
“Speaking of conversion. Did you know your Chantry has offered elvish children access to their parochial schoolhouses?”Mir’ana asks. Of course Lavellan knows. Elders of the former alienage had petitioned for access to Chantry schooling and Lavellan had filled Chantry offices in Wycome with Mothers amenable to the plan. She does not particularly care that most of these priests have a missionary bent. Admittedly rightly suspicious, Lavellan’s aunt continues, “If that’s not some ploy, I don’t know what is. The elves from the city are so excited by promises of learning horticulture and arithmetic they flock to the scheming sisters. Some of ours have taken the call too. It’s a siren song. They’re going to have their heads stuffed full of Chantry nonsense and history as told by the humans.”

“Some of the Keepers of the other Clans have banned their people attending. It might be best for Deshanna to do the same,” Irakli says. “What are your thoughts, Adahlen?”

He probably will not like her answer.The Inquisitor tries to think of a reason that superstitious, insular elves should not shy from the schools. Irakli and Mir’ana have young grandchildren and Lavellan is determined to give her second cousins the freedom she had wanted so badly as a child. “From what I’ve heard, I think the parochial schools are wonderful. Do they bar Dalish children from practing the Old Ways in their homes? No? Besides, if the Dalish really want more involvement in city government, it might do to learn civics and history. And what of our history? No book or study on the Dalish has ever been written by one of us. Wouldn’t it serve The People to have what the continent knows of us shaped by Dalish hands?”

“So you believe Dalish knowledge and perspective must legitimize itself by submission to the conventions and standards of the Theodosian academy,” Solas suggests. He looks to her beside him with a bit of a wry self-satisfaction in his eye. “Considering some of the other opinions you hold…I find that interesting.” The way he says it, she can tell he means ‘hypocritical.’ Lavellan suppresses a grimace. She is trying not to argue with her family in front of Solas, and now she fears she must try not to argue with Solas in front of her family.

“Oh! I forgot to say. I’m to be bonded! He’s called Tas’eryan of Clan Yasrin. Their halla have lead them to stay in the city too, but he’s asked to be taken by Clan Lavellan to be with me. We just started making plans for a ceremony—we want to wait until things settle down with all the events—sometime in late spring, we were thinking. I was going to tell you when you came for the Synod. If you’re around tomorrow evening, you should meet him.” She talks a bit about her betrothed—he’s a hunter-turned-adventurer with great renown as an explorer. She shows them the gemlike bracelet he had given her upon his proposal. “He found it in a sojourn to the Dales, in a lockbox beneath a tile in the ruins of a Second Kingdom palace. There’s an inscription on the inside, but I can’t tell what the script is. It’s…not written Elvish, that’s for certain.”

This piques Solas’s interest. “May I see? I will be careful.” Hellathen shoots a worried and nervous look at him but after a long moment she undoes the clasp of her bracelet to gingerly offer it to Solas. After a quick glance to her cousin, the First watches warily as the newcomer delicately handles her prize possession. Not long after it as it touches his fingers Solas expresses a note of pleasant surprise. “Ah, interesting! The magic in this piece long predates the Elvish Kingdom in the Dales. To find its way into a home of that era, it must have been held as an heirloom for some time.” He delicately turns the glimmering bangle in his hand to look at what is inscribed inside the cuff.

“Can you identify the script?” Lavellan asks. She peeks over Solas at the letter but the lamplight hits the curve of the bracelet in a way that casts a glare on the text. She cannot recognize the few characters she does see. Lavellan remembers the inscriptions on the Conflux—those too had been utterly foreign.

“This is indeed Elvish,” Solas explains eagerly. “Very few today would not recognize that. There are two scripts for the language—monumental and formal. Monumental was what was used for temples and placards. The script is less precise in depicting the nuances of the spoken language yet more clearly and appropriately conveys scale. Monumental was left behind on the most permanent things and hence it is what has remained and what today has been recognized as written Elvish. This is formal, used in the daily writings of the Elvhen. Few discernable remnants survived the fall of Elvhenan.”

“But in the crumbling library, the books—“

“—that involved an interplay with magic. We can speak about it later,” he says to her and by his tone he seems to imply that it is something unpleasant about his society. A small smile drops across his face as his grey eyes fall to the crystalline trinket in his hands. “The inscription here reads, ‘Our Gods will only come to those places where we call them.’ It has been some time since I’ve heard that particular proverb.”

“You said it was enchanted?” Hellathen asks.

“I did.” With a finger lightly glowing, Solas taps the bracelet and Lavellan sees his lips move. _Ah! As I expected!_ He taps it again. “It is a personal barrier and ward for silencing: a tool for one of any number of people who wished to keep their business secret.” Lavellan remembers the wards in Solas’s memories. They had been in his jewelry, too.

Solas seems to savor his explanation and the rapt faces at the table around him. He takes a few moments to show off how to activate the magic in the charm before offering it back to Hellathen.

“It’s really from the time of Arlathan? Wow.” Hellathen sounds almost giddy like a teenager as she cradles the piece in her hands. “‘Eryan won’t believe it.” She pauses and an expression of disbelief flares up. “How do you know all of this?”

“My studies have taken me many places: I walk the Fade, and wander the waking world. It takes some time to discover where to look.”

“Do you keep the Old Ways?” Lavellan’s uncle asks Solas. “I know you are not Dalish, but a number of the people who live beyond the cusp of human civilization try to honor the past the best they can.”

“I do not,” he says curtly. Lavellan remains anxious. How long before a fight starts?

“But you’re fluent in the language of our people and have great knowledge of our history.”

“I have a somewhat unusual perspective. This has lead to the development of unusual beliefs.”

“You seem like a good man still. I’m glad she has you,” says Lavellan’s aunt. “I knew eventually she would bring someone home. I don’t know what I was expecting.”

Lavellan very quickly shakes her head. This is precisely what she didn’t want to happen. “Oh. No. We’re not—“

“But you brought him for dinner?” Mir’ana stares at Solas, a small frown spreading across her face. Her uncle also seems a little confused.

“Oh no, Mamae, I invited them both.” The First nervously asks, “The two of you are just close friends, then?” Behind her parents’ backs but in sight of the Inquisitor, Hellathen points to her her cousin, and then to a spot on her own jaw up near her ear. Lavellan for a moment is confused until Hellathen, again furtively, points at Solas and then indicates to the side of her own neck. Peeking from the raised collar of Solas’s vest and sweater there is the telltale mottled purple of a love-bite. Lavellan swallows her mortification. Of course her aunt and uncle are aware that she has sex, but to have visible marks? How horrendously juvenile. The Antiquarian and his strange cohort must have seen the spots too.

“I mean, we did…we were—we’ve been? In the past,” Sometimes Lavellan wonders how she gives speeches. “Things between us are a little complicated as they stand.”

Solas joins her with a bland enough truth: “Our duties have been hectic and we have spent much time apart. Commitment is infeasible in our circumstances.”

“Not to be rude, da’len, but you near the age of thirty-six.” Her aunt purses her lips. Why is everyone today reminding her that she’s gotten old? “You have little time to—“

“Mamae!” Hellathen interjects. “Adahlen doesn’t want to hear that. And for that matter, neither do I. They’re counting down the days until ‘Eryan and I bond, insisting that I don’t need a ceremony to get started. I just want to wait to settle in before we really try,” the First explains in exasperation. Lavellan had forgotten how baby-crazed her vagrant people could be. Even those of the Dalish who preferred partners of their own sex or did not wish to bond were diligent to make arrangements with others to produce and rear children to protect the future of the race. What was the joke Sera used to make about repopulating the Empire?

Affably enough her uncle tells Solas, “Mir’ana and I raised a whole brood of seven: four of our union, as well as her sister’s daughter and my brother’s two sons.” She had grown up feeling like the odds and ends of the family. In hindsight she certainly was part of it. “Falon’Din lead two on their journeys away from us. Of the five who remain all have grown the Clan aside from these two, and they are the oldest. And the most busy, I suppose,” he adds with a chuckle. He looks at him. “You are not a young man yourself. Do you have—”

“—oh, no. No children,” Solas says so hastily it that it must be the truth. Lavellan finds it easily believable that Solas had never fathered a child in all his thousands of years of life. Never mind his immortality rendering reproduction useless—much like her is prickly and recalcitrant in a way ill-suited to family. Solas echoes perhaps these very thoughts aloud. “I have never considered myself suited to fatherhood.” Lavellan has always felt much the same about her own motherhood prospects. It is likely that she cannot bear children anyways because of what the Anchor had done to her body. She has not bled since the explosion at the Conclave.

Upon learning that Solas has had a relationship with Lavellan, Mir’ana and Irakli prod him some. They ask him where he is from. Her uncle suggests that he must have been born amongst the people, and her aunt almost nervously asks if he had ever been interred in a Circle, which had once been a nightmare for any mage living free. “I was not born among the People or in a city slum: I am somewhat of a foreigner to both worlds. As much as this world wishes to dictate what the life of an elf or the life of a mage should be, I refuse those prescriptions.” Lavellan is afraid that the conversation will grow hostile, but he brings them into his fold by suggesting quietly, “It is an ethos you might be familiar with: never again shall we submit?”

They press him for more details about his childhood and relations, and he avoids them masterfully. “The town where I was born never was on any map. Tides of fortune change and wells of opportunity run dry. People move on: I might be surprised to find my home still standing. If I have relatives, I would not recognize them and they would not recognize me.”

For the third time in the day, Solas is asked his age. This time he rather plainly lies: “I am forty-three. I was born in the early winter, so I suppose I must near forty-four.” Lavellan thinks that eight or nine years is a very regular difference in age for a pair in their thirties and forties. How normal it seems makes the reality all the more absurd.

Lavellan’s family wants to know how long the two have been together and Lavellan only clarifies, “Solas and I aren’t together.”

They seem to ignore that, and Lavellan and Solas spend the rest of the meal very briefly alternating turns to either answer or dodge questions about their relationship over the remnants of the stew, which Lavellan forces down and, to Lavellan’s releif, Solas consumes enthusiastically.

You two aren’t together anymore? Really? “Adahlen and I separated over eight years ago.”

But you’re still very fond of one another? “What makes you think that?”

The two of you have never considered children? “No, never. I think she is similarly disposed to me on the matter.”

And you never spoke of bonding? “Not one single time. Sorry to disappoint.” Lavellan regrets letting her embarrassment press her into admitting her romantic past with Solas.

“Perhaps this is to be expected,” Mir’ana says, and she turns her attention to Solas. “Loneliness has always followed Adahlen. Her father passed through adventuring away from his own Clan, and her mother…I’m sure she’s spoken to you. We tried our best to rear her, but she took poorly to our authority and she was the dark halla amongst the children, both in the home and in the Clan. I was so happy to see her grow beyond that but still I could seen the superficiality of her adjustment. I know her past and I know her future: her road is one of misfortunes. It is a shame, but perhaps her only companion is to be the Dread Wolf.”

Solas mutters something that is subsumed by a small sigh. Lavellan’s aunt seems perturbed by whatever he is covering up with the small rough-woven napkin that he has raised to cover his mouth. Despite her uneasiness she had apparently not caught Solas’s little bit of breathy Elvish. “What was that? You need to speak up if you want to—”

“—whatever this is, I don’t think it’s anything my ex-boyfriend needs to hear about, thank you very much,” Lavellan asserts. She had heard Solas: _If_ _only I should be so lucky._

“Mir’ana, you should listen—“

“—Irakli, if that one does not know her lot in life, he should,” Mir’ana interrupts her husband. She turns to her niece. The Inquisitor sits quiet with a grimace upon her face. “You cannot deny were made strange, and your circumstances have made you stranger still. You have always been angry and miserable, that your behavior has always been unbecoming. We loved you still, da’len, but it mattered little when your path took you from the Clan. Long ago you renounced the Old Ways and hence your very nature. And what are you if not one of the People?”

This is not something the Inquisitor wants. “—well, I can start by making a list if you would—“ she attempts to interject with an especial incipience.

Her aunt interrupts, “—you are nothing if not one of us. You must know in your heart of hearts that the humans see you as nothing more than a tool.” To Lavellan her aunt’s eyes, which brim with tears, are evocative of frost on dead grass and she holds the gaze, her jaw locked and clenched. “It seems almost cruel, but you are the way you are because of what the People need. Few will say so to your face but the Dalish see it. You were made in a way no elf should be made so that none other might share in your fate. In my dreams that I have seen it and it is not happy. You were designed by those Creators locked away to tempt the Dread Wolf and bear the horrible consequences of his attentions in the stead of all The People.”

So she’s condemned to suffering for the sake of an ungrateful people? A blistering anger bubbles in her voice. “Then I’m doomed like my mother.”

“I made no comparison—“

“—or if my misery is demanded by the Creators, were her suffering and death both just symptoms of my curse?” Her voice raises through the last words, scraping hoarse. She almost chokes on her anger and reflexively spits out a jagged laugh. When she manages to speak again it is less than coherent and less than true: “I haven’t suffered one day since I left this—” but is cut short by a hand on her back.

“Perhaps we should go see the archives soon.” Solas speaks calmly and coldly. His support is centering and steady but she bristles against it still. Lavellan remembers her old rage and misery, why she had hated the Clan so deeply. “Mir’ana. Irakli. Dinner was wonderful. Thank you for having us.”

* * *

A whispered password in Elvish opens the front of a large wine casket to reveal a gateway down into another vault. “It’s down the stairs,” says the First. The little woman has a tenseness to her tone, and it binds her gait as she draws back. “We keep the log up in the office—I can go grab that.” Hellathen had just finished telling them about the typical vetting process for the vault, used to insure no elf entered with mercenary intent and the close supervision its use warranted just before leaving them alone with the archives. Hellathen feels bad about the argument that had nearly erupted at dinner, Lavellan thinks.

By some mechanism Lavellan cannot immediately discern, the temperature and the humidity are controlled walls of the room have a slight barrier to them, and there are warding devices in each of the corners. There is a contraption in the corner mounted with large skeins of parchment that Lavellan realizes is a charmed facsimile press. The Circle mage who had worked on the vault had really put effort into the room, Lavellan thinks.

“Your Keeper took the Clan’s settlement here seriously to have this place constructed,” Solas observes quietly. “Ah, the maps are divided by regions. If we do not find something in the Hundred Pillars, though it may take days, with no other leads it might be prudent to look through the rest of the collection.” He seems frustrated.

Lavellan thinks to contact Charter in Val Royeaux— the Spymaster’s office keeps odd hours and someone should still be staffing the desk. The voice Lavellan hears through the crystal is not the one she expects. “Inquisitor. I am glad you connected while I was around.”

“Your Perfection,” Lavellan greets. “Snuck away from the Sunburst Throne to help Charter today?”

“From what I understand my distance from intelligence operations has caused security leaks. That won’t be the case in the future.” A levity enters her voice as she continues, “But what can I say? Perhaps my calling from the Maker is to guide the Chantry, but every once in a while I miss the mental exercise of spywork.” Leliana gives a giggle. There’s a lilt teetering between flirtation and caution when she ventures, “From what I understand, you had your own adventures today.”

“So you know all about the situation. It’s had its ups and downs,” she says. “I’m guessing you and Charter have been read in on everything. I have a lead I want investigated.”

“Is the place you are now secure to speak?”

“I’m in a basement under Wycome with Solas, so take that how you will.” Lavellan knows Leliana will understand not to disclose any information to her.

“Alone? I hope the two of you aren’t having too much fun.” The joke belies a distrust and worry.

“Lest I bring sin to heaven and doom all upon the world?” Lavellan sighs. “Trust me, I’m aware. Solas already knows all of the information I’m about to disclose to you.”

“Very well. Tell me about this lead.”

“Earlier today, Solas and I decided to check with Xenon the Antiquarian to see if he had ever heard of the artifact we’re searching for.”

“All the way in Kirkwall? You really have gotten around the continent today. Those mirrors are certainly impressive—I can see why Morrigan is fond of them. So. What did the Antiquarian have to say?”

“About four years ago, a Dalish elf named Ydhris came to the Black Emporium searching for the Conflux, but left immediately when it wasn’t there. The Antiquarian had prior dealings with Ydhris going about twenty-five years back, but he hadn’t made contact for a long while before he asked after our artifact. We don’t have any information about what Clan he was born to, but he apparently was a member of a cult dedicated to the worship of Dirthamen. I don’t have a name, but I think the cult might be based in the Dales. Then again, I’m not sure of that—he might have just meant they were Dalish. This Ydhris also might also be known in circles where people trade and traffic Elvish artifacts.”

“We can probably find something with that. If we turn up anything, Charter or I will get back to you. In the meantime, be careful.”

“Send thoughts and prayers.” With this sarcastic closing Lavellan returns to helping Solas search through the papers. At long last she asks Solas, “You’re feeling better?”

“You’re concerned for me.”

“Force of habit. I can’t shake it when you’re here, in front of me,” she says.

His smile settles into an exhalation of a laugh both joyous and distraught. Lavellan hates him but the pang of loathing is dull and sad. “My magics and the foods have worked well. I must admit I am excited to retire. Even if we do not spend hours here, the logistics of that can prove difficult.” The eluvian they had come through is in a shop in the city center and Lavellan fears it might seem as if the two of them were breaking and entering if they tried to get in so late at night. They had to ride with the celebrating official for twenty minutes, and it is unlikely that they will be able to catch a carriage back. “Other than an ancient kingdom temple to Dirthamen I don’t even know what we are looking for. I have been separating out those.”

“We’re looking for a needle in a haystack, except the needle might not be in the haystack.”

“And there is a potential the needle is hay-colored. Furthermore, there is the possibility that several of these needles are in the haystack but we know not how many.”

She takes another large folio of hide from the middle of the shelf and opens it to peer through the papers. There are myriad notes in the folios with the maps, some of which specify how the article had come to the archive. Many had been donated ten years ago by the the elvish librarian Lavellan had sent to help Deshanna establish the archive had salvaged (or perhaps, during the chaos, pilfered) a considerable number of maps to forbidden Elvish places from the library she had operated. She wonders what other treasures of the former Circle the archivist had stashed away. “When you were passed information about the Chantry excavation, did you look at any map copies before deciding it was boring? There’s landmarks I recognize from our charts down in this corner—like how these cairns here are beneath the cliff on a river. And I think that’s the Chantry.”

Solas reaches across Lavellan’s body to pull a paper in the open folio towards the two of them on the table. Though he had earlier avoided contact with the Inquisitor he now thoughtlessly stands with his chest to her shoulder and upper arm as he reads a crumbling note: “Il fait plus chaud qu'à l'extérieur, au sommet de la montagne…beaucoup des ouiseaux, dans la sculpture et la peinture…” For a moment she thinks he is speaking nonsense before she recognizes that he is reading in the old language of the Orlesian Empire, now only used in traditionalist enclaves and songs sang by sentimental bards. Even as he meanders in his quiet reading, the meter of his murmured speech is controlled and he does not stumble over pronunciations. “Parmi les mosaïques lumineuses et les fresques murales, il y a une porte...hm…les pièges horribles et les anciennes malédictions.” The corners of his lips turn up in bemusement at the last part: he definitely understands what he is reading. Solas looks up from the paper and when Lavellan meets his gaze only meager inches separate their noses. “This was transcribed by a Circle mage from the journals of an explorer. The original author and cartographer was a Dalish attaché to the Orlesian Emperor during the nations’ brief period of friendship in the Divine Age, it seems.”

“You know Orlesian,” Lavellan says. She tries not to sound impressed by the man in her proximity. “How many tongues is that? So Orlesian, Elvish of course, Common, Qunlat, and I swear I remember you mentioning you understood Tevene.”

“Both Ancient and Modern,” Solas confirms.  
  
“Is there any language you can’t speak?”

He doesn’t answer that. “It is a modest accomplishment once one considers the period of time over which I gathered my knowledge and skill. Given a few thousand years in the Fade, most anyone can pick up a dozen or two languages.” He pauses. “There are people in this world who have done the same with a mere twenty or thirty years. They are far more impressive.”

And Solas intends to kill them all. Lavellan finds this reason enough to pull away from the table and his close presence. Walking around the side of the table, she readjusts the conversation. “So. What does it say?”

“The explorer describes the temple to Dirthamen the map leads to. It is not any place I recognize personally. The temple is carved into the side of a mountain and its interior is warm. Inside, there is art of birds and a door they think leads deeper into the temple, but they didn’t approach it of fear of traps and curses. They expressed interest in coming back with competent mages and rogues to disarm them, but according to the Black Age source, it doesn’t seem like they ever did.”

“It sounds just like the description of the upper temple that Kenric and Harding gave me this morning.” In her exhaustion she exclaims, “Andraste’s tit, this morning seems like an age ago!”

“The Chantry allows the marshal of its honor guard to blaspheme?”

Lavellan rolls her eyes. “So which entity am I supposed to curse, The Stone? I can’t very well invoke the corpus of the Dread Wolf anymore. It makes me feel weird to swear on bits that have been in my mouth.” That shuts Solas up. His cheeks perhaps a little red in the low light of the room, he glances up at the ceiling of the little chamber and Lavellan sees the mark she had left on his neck. What is he embarrassed about? He’s the one who thinks orgies are boring. Lavellan reverts her attention to matters at hand. “Between that and the similarities in the terrain, I think this is a map to the place where the Conflux was housed. But it might not be the only one even in this archive.”

“I am aware. Until your agents return information on the Antiquarian’s Dalish contact, we can do little else but search more extensively. I should deploy my network in the search.” Solas draws his lips and stares at he ad she paces about the room. At long last he ventures, “Before we go on. We seem to have some privacy. Would you like to talk?”

“About what?”

“You’ve been unhappy since we arrived.”

“Today was already long, and it got a lot longer,” she says. “I should have thought twice before suggesting we come here. Maybe I was projecting when I thought you might cause a problem.” Solas has been so good, so polite. What had Lavellan been thinking? Regardless of whether or not Solas is good, he is near always polite.

“I didn’t expect you to be so openly disdainful of your people and their ways.” A little mirthful air in his voice indicates that he is pleased with her. She likes that and she doesn’t like that she likes that. “You’ve always engaged in apologia for them.”

“Well, I’m not going to let outsiders know how I feel. I owe the people who raised me some loyalty.”

“You did used to think there was value to the Dalish culture.”

“Who am I to condemn a whole culture?” Lavellan laughs. “Someone that was made miserable by it for years, I suppose.” She sighs. “You know, I used to love stories about the gods and the past when I was a kid. You had this place where elves were kings, and used their minds for more than building traps or binding wounds. There wasn’t a poet or a jurist in the Clan, but those existed in stories. I grew up thinking of Arlathan as a place where an elf could be anything. And even after I stopped believing, I really thought that’s what the Dalish were holding out to have.”

“So now you want your people to assimilate to the world that they have rejected—and that has emphatically rejected them—for so long.”

“It sounds bad of me when you put it like that. But you think the ways of the Dalish are all nonsense, too.”

“I do. But there is something admirable about standing against your whole world, holding white-knuckled to your self-determination, without care that either the past or future has vindicated you—asserting your right to be as you are, unadulterated, unbowed.”

“I guess all sorts of people like living in the woods, dedicating all their time and energy to subsistence.”

“But that never suited _your_ ambition,” Solas says. Instinctively Lavellan recoils at the accusation and Solas rushes to clarify himself. “I do not mean to be judgmental. I remember my own youthful aspirations. I assume that many elves share some dissatisfaction with the lots afforded to them by their lives. The odd disposition of our friend Sera towards her race is in part rebellion against and in part resignation to these unfortunate limitations.”

“Right now, right here in Wycome elves have the opportunity to make more of themselves. The city elves see that. But the Dalish? They talk so much of their sacrifice for the future The People. Can a handful of Clans not overcome their myopia about the Old Ways for that?”

“They believe their mission in Wycome is something different entirely.”

Lavellan almost shudders when she is brought to recall the dreams Hellathen and Kelleth share of dominance over the city. They claim to honor the entire history of their people but are so caught up in dreams of Elvhenan that they have forgotten the lesson of the Kingdom of the Dales. “What’s worse is that now they think I have some role in their fever dream. I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with any more of this fate nonsense. For the rest of the world, I’ve already done what I was chosen for and no one has to talk about it anymore. Now I’m just a politician. Here, they still expect something of me. I wish I knew what it was so I could just get it over with,” she jokes.

Solas offers a somber response. “They think you will be martyred eventually. I do have enough spies here to pick up gossip and tend to pay especial attention to word regarding you. Your Keeper has tried to still the chatter, but her influence does not extend far into other Clans. For the rest of the continent, your life began at the Conclave. Amongst the Dalish, tales are passed around of your familial misfortune and misspent youth. The farther the stories travel from Clan Lavellan, the more lengthy and heart-rending the enumerations of your miseries become.”

“Halani-ma, my life was _fine_. I hated it, but it was fine.” Her mother’s decline and death had certainly been traumatic but the rest of her unhappiness had been nebulous and self-imposed.

“Amongst themselves over the past decade, many of the Clans have turned into some sort of tragic figure, warped by fate to bear a burden no elf should bear. Some believe you have noble ends. Others think you are some sort of deceiver—yet most believe that the role you have yet to play will shape the future of the People.” Solas shakes his head and in the ambient light of the archives shadows furrow on his face as he grimaces in disgust and disappointment. “This vague forecast seems prescient considering the conflict pending between the two of us. But I can assure you that it is all foolish superstition. For what it’s worth, your aunt’s dreams likely are not dispositive of the future. You recall fighting the Nightmare in the Fade—such beings manifest dreamers’ fears, which themselves are drawn from the waking world. Many convince themselves projection is premonition.”

Lavellan thinks about misery and about her mother. It’s been almost thirty years since the woman’s passing and now Lavellan remembers more anger than she does grief. “How _insulting_ that always was to me, when the hahrens would suggest that my mother had been born to drink herself to death. I thought it was ‘never again shall we submit,’—but then there’s the will of the Creators we have to bow before. They’re not even supposed to be around, just like humans say about the Maker.” Solas watches Lavellan as she paces about the table at the center of the room. His gaze follows her footfalls with a gentleness in his aspect that withstands his quiet wince of pain. Lavellan hates that her wonderfully awful companion undoubtedly understands what hurts and angers her so deeply, that she can tell he shares her rage. She cuts the confusion out at its source with a slicing laugh that feels as if it might give way to tears. “What’s even appealing about the idea of fate?”

Solas has an answer for her. He leans forward on the table, his eyes casting down over the pages and folios piled there. “To many the world seems capricious and senseless. Others with the mind for it can see its machinations: monstrosity after monstrosity unfolding for petty, banal reasons like fear and greed, and they come to recognize that fear and that greed in their own hearts. They are struck by a hateful awareness of their complicity in this sorry state of affairs. One way to dispel this is indulging superstitions where the world is moved by inexplicable forces beyond any person’s control. The whole of the world marches towards some intended goal, and those who behave how they are supposed to behave will be rewarded. It is a justification for an unexamined life, an excuse for thoughtless action and inaction, and for maintaining what has been as it always will be. If the Maker or the Creators, the Stone or the stars have ordained it, who are mortals to question it? To fight the tide is to drown in doom and misfortune.” Disdain drips in Solas’s voice as he speaks, and as he finishes he slowly straightens himself from his tense position propped against the table. “Fate tends to serve little more than an absolution of guilt, a denial of responsibility.”

Lavellan is silent. There is something wonderful and sickening at once from hearing this from Solas—supposed Creator, avowed destroyer, and unquestioned master of his own path. She stops pacing to fall still in a simmering frustration. Her prosthetic feels heavy and her knees are weak and she wavers where she stands. Solas approaches her with open arms but invites her to make her last steps: “Come here, vhenan.” His old pet name for her. Lavellan closes the gap and tries to hold herself to him the best she can with one of her limbs being prosthetic. Solas pulls her close and squeezes her in his arms, reassuring her in a voice hardly louder than a whisper, “You are so brave and so brilliant. Of course someone such as yourself cannot bear the thought of living in a world unchangeable by force of will.” One hand of his strokes her hair as he holds her head in the crook of his neck and the other massages her back between the blades of her shoulders. She wishes she had always had someone like this. She wishes she still had him.

“You don’t have to do what you’re planning to do.”

“Not for the sake of fate, no,” Solas in part concurs. She wonders if this is some sort of promise or invitation. He kisses her cheek and his lips linger there for a long moment. The little peck is at once chaste and passionate, romantic and paternal. Before she had known him to be a god, she had always thought that she and Solas were in some ways the same—whatever path she tread, from his understanding and staid, calm guidance she had some feeling that he had walked it before even when it would defy all seeming logic. Collapsed in his arms contrary and consistent to all logic Lavellan begins to feel the same once more.

A little knock sounds at the door at the top of the stairs. “I’m not interrupting anything? It’s been a while and I thought I’d check on you.”

Upon hearing her cousin’s voice, Lavellan goes rigid. “Disgusting things,” she jokes. Solas loosens his hold on her but does not let her go until she initiates a reluctant separation. “Has it even been an hour? You can come down here if you want.”

Hellathen fidgets as she stands in the stairwell. “About Mamae…I’m sorry. I don’t want to say Kelleth is right, but she has been strange lately. She’s sleeping poorly and saying she’s having bad dreams. I know she’s always been like this, but she would say she predicted rainfall, or a visitor to the camp—usually after those things came. Now she’s claiming that she sees all these tragedies on the horizon. Itan is worried and so am I.”

“She’s been drinking.”

“From what Itan says, almost every evening to get to sleep.”

Lavellan notices the tome in Hellathen’s hands. “Thank you for bringing the logbook.”

“So this isn’t it—it’s a ledger of Deshanna’s her office expenses. The binding is identical. Once a month we review all of our records, and that was yesterday—we had both books out on the same desk and I guess they got switched. If you go tonight or tomorrow, could you give this to her? I don’t have business at the hall for another few days, and I doubt she’ll have time to head here. I would ask you not to make your visit tonight. With what her energy is like, she’s almost certainly asleep.”

Solas seems a little uneasy and one of his hands floats to the vest pocket containing the silent dowsing mechanism. His gaze meets Lavellan’s and after a long moment he gathers that she is waiting for him to speak. “Even with all that is at stake, and the time wasted with our prior diversions…perhaps it is best we rest. Nothing more will come of applying our tired minds tonight.”

* * *

  
“No thank you,” Lavellan says to rebuff Kelleth’s offer of a swig of wine from a clay vessel. She suppresses a yawn. Hellathen had run off to secure her and Solas lodging around the Campgrounds and had forbidden them from following—‘just to make sure everything’s nice.’ The Campgrounds get visitors from other clans often and in the Dalish tradition, Clan Lavellan has sought to be hospitable to other elves. Wycome, the only stationary Dalish settlement, has become a port of call for Dalish pilgrims and adventurers, a repository of records for those seeking knowledge, and a waypoint for elves looking for items, answers, and people. As such the Clan maintains some yurts as guest quarters and apparently they are so often full that Hellathen has warned Lavellan that her request of ‘one room, two beds’ could be hard to fill. Lavellan thinks that perhaps the chore of arranging housing will calm her cousin—combing over details and assuming routine responsibility always has always soothed Hellathen. Lavellan thinks that she will probably make a good Keeper one day.

“What? You saying ‘no’ to booze? I don’t believe it.” Kelleth turns to Solas and points at Lavellan, the jug dangling from his outstretched hand. “If my memory is anything to go on, that one’s a terrible drunk.”

“Says the one who’s drunk right now,” Lavellan shoots back.

Solas responds, “I have known the Inquisitor for a decade.” He doesn’t mention he’s been absent for eight of those. Solas has a politeness to his tone but Lavellan feels an edge of irritation lurking under it. He is impatient to get to sleep. “I am aware of most of her proclivities.” Lavellan tries not to think about all the times during the War she had drank until the world spun uncontrollably around her and she had gone to demand attention from Solas only to receive almost paternal chastisements about alcohol dependency. Even as he voiced his disapproval he would give her comfort, using magic to cool the hands he laid on her fevered body as she curled miserably at his side.

“And I’ve got near twenty—ten on you,” Kelleth says. Buzzed, he pokes at Lavellan teasingly to Solas: “You know, I caught her sneaking a flask on the hunt a couple of times.”

“I wasn’t trying to sneak anything!”

“Don’t lie.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t bring a flask, just that I wasn’t hiding anything,” Lavellan responds. She’s glad to hear friendly japing instead of whispers of Elvish dominion over Wycome. “I couldn’t have hunted with the shakes.”

“…I am beginning to think these people sent you to the Conclave to be rid of you,” Solas says.

“He’s got the truth of it—the lot of us can’t stand you and we wanted you out.” Despite his earlier dislike of Solas, Kelleth seems to have warmed to him and is behaving amicably towards him now. Perhaps it is the drink. Or perhaps it is because Kelleth has his boyfriend with him. At Kelleth’s side stands a sandy-haired and heavily freckled city elf that Lavellan has met once or twice before on previous visits to Wycome and she thinks that she recalls that he works as a cabinetmaker. They have been together for some time. Kelleth leans slightly against the other elf, who laughs abashedly and does his best to support his partner, as he extends the bottle to Lavellan again. “Now cope with hearing that by having a drink.”

“I have to be up tomorrow.”

“Then don’t drink enough to feel it in the morning.”

“Oh, no. Once I start—“ Kelleth shoots Lavellan a look of reproach and she rolls her eyes. “What? You said it yourself—I’m a terrible drunk! You want to see me hammered, I’ll drink when I’m here next month. We’ll do an afterparty for something during the Synod.”

“Deal,” he says, and has another swig himself. His lips purple, Kelleth turns to Solas. “How about you, flat-ear? Care for a drink?”

Solas closes his eyes and shakes his head without speaking. Seeing Solas’s grimace, the city elf laughs sheepishly and offers, “If it helps any, Kelleth calls me that too sometimes. He doesn’t mean offense.”

“Don’t worry about Solas, Brydin,” Lavellan says. “He’s out of sorts because it’s past his bedtime.”

“No, that is her!” “She really is here!” “Inquisitor!” “Don’t bother her! Mamae said not to get in her business.” A gaggle of nine or so children seem to materialize from nowhere. They seem to be between the ages of seven and ten and move quickly in a pack. Two are dressed entirely like city elves and one in Dalish child’s garb has big elvish eyes but rounded ears. “Hahren Adahlen! Is your hand really fake?” “You can’t ask that, dummy!”

From an irate twitch of his lip Solas seems bothered by the clamor, but not so much that he can’t pick one little piece out: “Hahren Adahlen.” He seems entertained by the very honorific Lavellan had lovingly teased him with so long ago.

“Oh, I don’t like that.” In the best case scenario, Lavellan is certain she will be dead from the Anchor within the decade and as such had paid little attention to her own aging. Today everyone seems to be intent on letting her know that she is getting older, right in front of her immortal ex-boyfriend no less. Lavellan chooses to think the children are only applying the title because of her position as Inquisitor. She repeats herself, “I don’t like that at all.”

“Oh! Aneth-ara, all!” Hellathen bustles down a walkway between two huts. She sees the children waving to her and hears them clamoring her name and asks them to be patient before turning to her cousin. “Adahlen. So I just checked and we do have one of the huts we keep for guests free. It’s the first one off the left corner of the garden—the only one in its row with railing on the deck. I can show you in a moment if you want, and if you have anything we need to get you, I can see to it. I know you mentioned the two of you were no longer—” Hellathen jumps as one of the children tugs on her arm while repeating her name. She quickly turns to the kids, the pitch of her voice raising. “Manners! You don’t interrupt adults when they speak! Creators, it’s so late. What are you doing up at this hour? Shouldn’t you be with your parents?”

The children all seem to start talking at once: “Hahren Veshanon kept us late for storytime. It was terrible!” “First, will you tell us a better story before we have to head in?” “Itan won’t be mad if we say we’re with you!” “Hahren Veshanon told a boring story about some priest from the Dales, but I told my friends here that Dalish stories were good. Now I look like a liar!” “Miss Hellathen, I want to hear a real, good, Dalish story!” “Wait, can’t the Inquisitor tell us a story? She’s had so many adventures.” “I want to hear about how she fought a dragon!” “Then we get two stories! Cedrinne and Mezzi have to hear something Dalish!”

“Want to go, Brydin?” Kelleth asks.

Brydin answers, “Not if you want to stay. I love Dalish stories—I never mind hearing more.” Something about that seems to please Kelleth—Lavellan assumes he has likely put a good deal of effort into converting his boyfriend. “You’re a storyteller, Hellathen?”

“Sort of? As one who will one day be Keeper, I must know all the stories,” Hellathen explains. “I must remember the truths in them and guide wisely with the lessons they hold. So while it isn’t my job to teach the young, I can tell them tales.” Hellathen frowns at Lavellan and Solas. “Would you two mind waiting? Or I could take you first, and come back for the kids, or—” She becomes flustered again and Lavellan notices a flare of distress upon her face.

“I haven’t heard a story from you in a long time and I would love to hear one now,” Lavellan says. She imagines that halfway to the place she intends to escort them Hellathen will break down in tears. From what Lavellan can remember, the First does not get overwhelmed often, but when she does it hits her hard. She wonders what stress she’s been under preparing for the festivals and the Synod.

“I would be interested to hear what tales you tell of the ancients.” From his sleepy and flat visage Solas does not look at all interested, but he seems to understand what Lavellan is doing for her cousin’s comfort.

“Thank you,” mouths Lavellan to Solas as her cousin herds the babbling crowd of kids over to a nearby fire pit and instructs them to sit around it.

When Hellathen doubles back, she asks, “Since this is holding you up. Which ones do you like?”

She glances at Solas. She feels like he might judge her for the content of the stories she enjoyed as a child. She had quit going to religious events after a certain age and wracks her mind for things she had once enjoyed. “Uhm, let’s see. I like the one where there are those starcrossed lovers.”

“There are a couple of those.”

“It’s the one where Elgar’nan’s youngest daughter falls in love with a lyrist and her father forbids the union.”

“Oh, I know what you’re talking about. Creators, I haven’t heard that one since Hahren Ivallah passed.”

“How did that one even go? I just remember the song he’d sing us at the beginning.”

“Uh, so, the princess falls in love with a lyrist because he played all these pretty songs for her. She begs her father to let her marry, and the King says no, you’re not marrying this loser.” Lavellan realizes that Hellathen, Brydin, Kelleth, and even Solas are all listening intently to her as she begins her ramble through the tale. She tries to pick up the speed of her recount as she continues, “Elgar’nan tells his daughter that if the musician beats his fiercest champion in a fight to the death, he can have her hand in marriage. The princess knows there’s no way her boyfriend can win, so she searches for someone who will defy Elgar’nan to help her rig the duel. The only one who answers her cries for help is Fen’Harel. He strikes a deal with the princess. He wants to steal the Crown Jewels, but can’t enter the palace where they’re held while Elgar’nan watches for him, so he asks that the princess do something to distract or incapacitate her father so he can pull off a heist. In exchange, he’ll make it so the princess can be with her lyrist.

“The princess expects a guy with the Dread Wolf’s reputation to try and scam her, so she insists that he carry out his side of the bargain first, and is pretty surprised when he readily agrees. Fen’Harel gives the princess this draught and tells her there are two pitchers of wine in the kitchen, and that the one on the right will be delivered to the champion before he fights. He tells her to put the draught in the wine so the champion will fall asleep during the fight, allowing the musician to slay him. So the morning of the fight to the death, the princess sneaks down to the kitchen and puts the draught into the pitcher on the right before she goes to watch with her father.

“Well, it turns out that Fen’Harel lied about which of the pitchers went where. The one on the left is delivered to the champion and the one on the right goes to the box where the Elgar’nan and the princess are sitting. They drink the wine and the King falls ill, the princess dies, and of course the champion kills the boyfriend. Fen’Harel tricked her into poisoning Elgar’nan so he would be bedridden and incapable of stopping Fen’Harel from breaking into the castle and stealing the Crown Jewels. Meanwhile, the Dread Wolf had kept his promise that the princess and the lyrist would be together because they were together. In death. There are more details, but that’s about it.”

At some point during her ramble through the tale, the kids protest the time they’re taking and Brydin leads Kelleth over to start them in a call and response song about all the animals escaping the Queen of Antiva’s zoo. Through the family-friendly lyrics Lavellan recognizes that its tune is shared with an extremely raunchy drinking song mostly slurred out in divey city taverns—in its original sordid form the song is an especial favorite of Sera and Thom Rainier. Brydin has a good signing voice and the melody is bouncy and the kids are quickly engaged with the family-friendly version. The elves seem happy here. Lavellan hopes they’re happy here.

“You are not very good at telling stories,” Hellathen laughs. “Well, I don’t know that one well enough to tell it to the kids, so which other ones do you like?”

Lavellan wracks her memory, thinking of the tales that had brought her joy and reprieve as a child. “Uhm, the one where Fen’Harel baits Dirthamen and Falon’Din into stabbing each other through a dressing screen is really good. So’s the one where the prince with all the older brothers makes a deal with Fen’Harel to take his father’s throne, and the one where Fen’Harel tricks Sylaise into marrying a mule…” She stops when she catches Solas’s grey gaze, gently trained upon her. Lost to obliviousness in the recollections of her youth, Lavellan asks, “What?”

“There seems to be a bit of a theme here,” Solas observes. Something inside Lavellan lurches when she realizes that Solas—or a fictionalized version of Solas—is the central figure in all of the stories she has listed. Long ago when she had first learned of Solas’s identity Lavellan had shuddered in private shame at the thought that she had grown up adoring stories about the Dread Wolf. She had never taken any tale of the Creator as fact, but she had so deeply adored their anti-hero, who laughed in the faces of greater gods and beguiled his adversaries with his quick mind and tongue. Fen’Harel did whatever he wished and one day, young Adahlen had told herself, so would she. She had tried very hard not to think of this over the past six years.

To Lavellan’s dismay, Hellathen speaks before she can. Like Kelleth, she seems to like the idea of embarrassing the Inquisitor in front of her friend: “You don’t know the half of it with her and Fen’Harel. There’s…probably a reason Mamae’s so focused on that.”

Solas watches Lavellan expectantly with his eyebrows raised and Lavellan squirms a bit under the attention. He wears a small frown of curiosity, inviting the Inquisitor to say more. “It’s part of a stupid joke from when I was a teen,” she explains, feeling very much like an adolescent caught in an unfortunate round of truth-or-dare or spin the bottle. For years now she has tried very hard not to think of this. “So I wasn’t the best behaved kid—I’d skip devotions, pick fights, fraternize with humans, disappear for days on end…do little things that got me into all sorts of trouble. When I got caught at it, some of the hahrens would go blue in the face yelling at me with all these euphemisms about how the Dread Wolf would eat me alive if I wasn’t careful. So of course I told them that I was trying to get myself taken away.”

“She had a whole thing about how she worshipped Fen’Harel, making up stupid invocations and collecting things for fake rituals. A couple of hahrens thought she was provoking the Wolf and would doom the Clan,” Hellathen adds. She is clearly thinking of her mother’s tirade at dinner as she goes on explaining, “That’s not how that even works, but it drove them up trees in panic.”

“So many people complained to the Keeper that she asked me to stop so she didn’t have to hear about it anymore,” Lavellan sighs. Being a miscreant had become a dismal chore by that point anyways.

With a little wink, Hellathen asks Solas, “Has she shown you the tattoo?”

When Lavellan is finished making a sour face at her cousin, her attention is brought to Solas as he exhales a little bewildered laugh. “Oh? Is that the constellation Fenrir on your left shoulder? I thought you were born under the sign.” His lips curl in to a sweet grin that he tries to swallow down by clearing his throat. He is clearly somewhat uncomfortable with this.

“I was, but…you know.” Astrology had become Lavellan’s explanation for the particular tattoo as an adult, having found it embarrassing to disclose that she had permanently embossed a symbol of her youthful angst into her skin. Before the Dread Wolf himself, this is all somehow even more humiliating. “It was all edgy teen nonsense. I didn’t actually worship anything,” she insists. Nervously she rubs her shoulder above the padding where her prosthetic arm is anchored. Why should any of this matter? Solas himself is the first to admit that Dalish legends bear little semblance to reality.

Perhaps it doesn’t actually matter to him—Solas lets himself have the confused smile he had been suppressing. “I can see why you enjoyed the stories. Trickster tales tend to be more fun than didactics.”

“Are you people ready?” Kelleth calls over. “Brydin’s going to run through all his songs.”

“Hurry up!” “I am getting sleepy…” “What story are we hearing?”

“Well, if you don’t have any ideas—I’ll do something new,” Hellathen decides. “‘Eryan told me this one.”

* * *

  
The children are crowded close together, heaped under thick woven ponchos and blankets. Excited to be up late, they giggle amongst their little group. The kids glance in amazement back at Lavellan where she and Solas are seated in canvas sling chairs, and the Inquisitor pretends not to notice how enamored they seem with her. She isn’t good with little ones, and her aunt’s entreatments that she start a family run rampant through her mind despite the impossibility of the request. Hellathen clears her throat as she positions herself in front of the fire pit at the center of the little seating area and with a swoop of her hand conjures a warm and crackling fire that illuminates her from behind. The magicked fire begins to dance with different colors and the Dalish children are delighted by the magic. Enrapt, they giggle and clap, and soon the one or two others raised with common sensibilities about the arcane warm up to the prismatic display.

Hellathen speaks slowly and the fire behind her begins to glow in bright gold, the color of coin and newly turning leaves. “A long, long time ago there was a beautiful city with streets of gold and castles made of silver trees as tall as mountains.”

“Is it Arlathan?” the children whisper. “Of course, duh!” “That’s where all the gods lived, and other elves too,” explains one of the Dalish children to an outsider friend.

“This was the city of Arlathan, the place of love where the Creators sat on thrones of jewels and all The People could come to pay them praise with song, art, and splendor. But this story doesn’t take place in Arlathan—it takes place beyond the golden gates of the city, far in the dark reaches of the wilds. Those elves that lived beyond Arlathan in the wilds were not bad, or unwelcome in the city: on the contrary, they were good and brave and bold! They sought to explore the world and spread the magic of The People far beyond the city’s walls and as such, they set up beautiful hamlets amidst the trees where they lived the Ways we now seek to emulate. In some sense they were the precursors to the Dalish! Now, of all the gods and goddesses, who was the most adventurous one? Da’leni?”

“Uhh…Andruil!” “It’s the Huntress!” “Andruil!”

A hum arises from the sling chair next to Lavellan. Recalling the rather unflattering things she had seen of the Huntress in the Fade earlier that day, the Inquisitor peers over to Solas to check his reaction further. Apart from the hum, Solas appears as if he is about to lapse off to sleep. He has has leaned back deeply in his seat with his hands are folded atop his stomach and his eyes closed. For half a moment Lavellan forgets that he is the source of most of her problems and feels bad about how tense and drawn his features appear even while relaxing.

Hellathen continues as the fire behind her beings to flare with licks of bright green in its cast of gold. “Da’leni, you got it,” she praises them, “it’s the goddess of the hunt! Even though the city was spectacular, Andruil was truly the patron of the wilds! The goddess, who wherever she went donned forest green ironbark beneath a dark hunter’s shroud, was more at home in the forests where she could cross river and hill hunting wild beasts. Though all the Creators shared dominion over the world, Andruil had taken special charge of the great forests that stretched from the gates of the city to the sea in the east and the south. She promised that she bring the wisdom of the Creators to these lands and protect them from despoilment and chaos, and their people from the danger posed by monsters who lived in the dark places of the wild. Though Andruil was called to sit in the Court of the Creators in Arlathan for half the year, she would spend the entire time she sat atop her throne yearning for the mystery of the frontier and its brave people.

“Whenever she could, Andruil eagerly headed back into the wilds she loved so dearly. Some days, she would bring a retinue of her attendants and worshippers. At other times, she would go forth alone to truly experience the great freedom and the majesty of the forest in peace. With her magical bow, she would explore the woods searching high and low for adventures. One day as Andruil wandered alone she heard weeping in the forest. The miserable howling was not the sound of one sad voice, she realized—this great pain was shared by many. In their desperation, they begged. From miles away, she heard them pray, ‘Where is Andruil? Where is our protector?’

“Andruil could not ignore these prayers from her people: with her fleet feet she rushed over wooded hill and stream until she found her way to a village emanating a thick pillar of smoke. What she saw was a sorry sight: houses were toppled to the ground like splintered and charred matchsticks, and what had once been a modest wooden temple had been toppled over. The remains of the town spewing columns of black up into the sky. ‘My People,’ Andruil cried to those mourning in the rubble, ‘what befell you here?’

“The villagers bowed their heads in shame. ‘A monster attacked us, Your Radiance, just today at noon when the sun was at its highest point in the sky. The beast destroyed our homes and plucked from the the ruins our most prized things, and would have slain us all if we had not fled.’

“‘A monster?’ Andruil asks. ‘What manner of creature was this? No beast will escape the vengeance of the greatest hunter in all of Elvhenan.’

“The villagers wept once more: ‘We could not see the beast: when we looked upon it we fell blind and we ran sightless away, tripping and tumbling was we were born forth in terror.’ At this Andruil was bewildered. She believed she had seen every beast there was to see in the world but she could not fathom what matter of monster would do such a thing. She decided that it could not be a beast and was instead the trickery of the Dread Wolf.”

The children gasp as the fire behind Hellathen sinks to a dangerous deep red. “I knew it,” one glowers. Hellathen glances at her cousin behind the little gaggle and Lavellan makes herself laugh and winks at her. Lavellan is happy to see a smile briefly pierce the authoritative aspect Hellathen has put on for storytelling. She hears a little hum from Solas at her right—when Lavellan glances over she sees that he has opened his eyes a little at the invocation of his title.

“Andruil, brave and bold, went to confront the villain she knew had brought tragedy to her people.”

“Why would he want to hurt people?” one of the children from the city, presumably, mutters. “He’s the bad guy in all the stories.” “Was he a real wolf?” another curious city elf asks. “Nuh-uh!” “No, he was, sometimes!”

Hellathen answers without breaking the stride of her story. “All the Creators could change their shapes, but as a man Fen’Harel dressed himself with the skins and teeth of wolves and the hunger of a predator gleamed in his blood red eyes. He regretted the hand he played in The Creation of the People, and his heart was dark with hatred, malice, and greed. The Huntress found the Dread Wolf far from any of The People, hidden away in a fortress tucked away in the darkest clouds in the sky. He sneered at her as she approached him where he sat atop his throne of skulls.”

At the evocation of this ridiculous image, Lavellan again peeks to the Dread Wolf himself only to see him sleepily roll his decidedly not-very-red eyes. With some bemusement she leans towards Solas and in a voice so low that only he can hear she remarks, “You never showed me your throne of skulls.”

He leans back towards her to quietly respond, “You never asked to see it.” Lavellan settles back in her seat with a grin on her face.

“—with Andruil’s drawn arrow pointed right at his face, he gives a big frown and denies ever having attacked any village. ‘Liar,’ Andruil says. He had tricked the good Creators many times before and she would not fall for his lies again.

“‘You don’t have to believe me,’ he says, ‘but shooting me won’t save your people. Noon approaches and your dragon soon will strike once more.’

“‘A dragon! You know of the beast and when it will attack? Where is it? Is it invisible? Tell me!’ Andruil demands, her voice clear and forceful like a river.

“‘Certainly. I do not want to cause your people to suffer,’ the Dread Wolf laughs. The Huntress knows in her heart that he does not care who suffers or dies but remains silent. ‘The dragon is visible, but you cannot see it. As such, the place where you will find your prey is precisely where you should not look. You should not waste that arrow on me.’”

The fire behind Hellathen begins to be taken over by alternating blues and oranges, waving through the tones of the rainbow. “The Huntress runs off down the mountain and into the wilds to try to find the beast and save her faithful, but soon realizes that she had no idea what the Dread Wolf might have meant. In the next week she searched where she could, but she could find no dragon. She seeks the most forbidden places to find its lair and slays many monsters hiding in these places, but each day at noon she hears the prayers of her people as the dragon returned again and again to pillage another encampment of Elvhenan’s bravest people. The goddess’ heart aches for those she loved, and those who loved her.

“At long last she goes back to the lair of the Dread Wolf. In the sunset of a long day’s journey, she finds the Dread Wolf cackling atop his monstrous throne.” The fire goes back to a deep blood red. “In tears, the Huntress says, ‘Villain though you are, I will bargain with you so long as you help me save my people. I am desperate. Please—I will enter your debt.’ She knows it is foolish to make a deal with him and that he had only hateful things in his heart and mind, but for the people of the wilds who loved her, what choice does she have?

“The Dread Wolf grins with malicious joy when he sees the proud Huntress beg. ‘I can help you save your people,’ he says, ‘but you will have to pay the price.’

“‘Anything. Where is the beast?’ Andruil asks.

“‘Right now? Far to the west.’ The Dread Wolf comes down from his throne, clad in ragged hides and black furs. ‘I will take you to the monster. The howling wind will take us where we must go.” The fire flickers in a bright white almost as if it is going to jump from the pit and the children mutter in fascination. They gasp as the fire suddenly shrinks in to the embers as Hellathen’s voice calms.

“The Dread Wolf summons his quick wind and the two ride on the harsh breath of air until morning to a a yawning cave on a beach with white sands. The sea stretches out to the west and Andruil realizes they are in the east, beyond the sea in a strange land. ‘You’ve tricked me!’ she exclaims. ‘You said the beast was to the west. Where have you brought me?’ She knocks an arrow and aims it at the Dread Wolf, ready to slay him at his first wicked move.

“‘I told the truth when I said the beast was in the west, but it is not there now. If you fire true but do not slay the beast with this arrow, you may loose the rest of your quiver into my stomach. Now look, into the depth of the cave. Do you see the bright light?’

“Andruil, bow still drawn, looks into the depths of the earth. Inside it at the back of the tunnel is a prick of light, no bigger than the head of a pin.” The fire, its light pure and clean, begins to glow brighter ever so slowly. “The light grows bigger and brighter and Andruil realizes that something grows nearer and nearer. When the light is the brightness of a candle’s flame, Fen’Harel tells her, “Before it becomes unbearable, loose your arrow at the center of the light.’

“Just as the brightness grows larger and sharper and stings the eyes of the Huntress, she releases the arrow she holds at the ready! It flies into the dark and with a ‘thwack!’ hits its mark! A bright flash of light shines from the depths of the cave,” the bonfire flares behind Hellathen, “and at then begins to sink away to a faint golden glow. Andruil rushes into the cave to see what she has slain: As Fen’Harel had said, it is a dragon, but it is unlike any dragon she has ever seen!

“As the shadows of the cave encroach upon it, the dragon is beginning to vanish. Andruil realizes: The dragon was made of light! Each day, the beast flew along with the movement of the sun, the two unbearably bright lights becoming one high in the sky. No person could look directly at either, and with this the dragon dove to the ground to commit its plunder only at the moment when the sun was directly overhead. Each day the dragon flew from east to west and at night would crawl into its distant western burrow that bored down to the firmament below the earth and climbed back up into the east before the next morning.

“With the last flicker of light from the dying dragon, Andruil realizes that the Dread Wolf has made good on his promise and that she is in his debt. ‘I am a woman of my word. I will honor our deal.’ She expects he wants something evil from her and though she is brave she fears what she may have to do as a boon to the Dread Wolf.

“‘Come along,’ Fen’Harel says, ‘and I will explain what I ask of you.’ They travel on the wind together to a grand gate, its bars spectral and the space beyond undefined. ‘I want you to collect something I am owed. Some months ago visitors came calling—strangers to this world led by their noble Prince. They said they dwelt in the Void and called themselves kin of those enemies we have caused to be forgotten, though by their first appearance this new entourage appeared to be far less base and worldly. One night in my hall we shot dice as we drank and laughed. Having no coin holding value in our world, the Prince of the unthinkable realms bet his prized armor. The armor was of glimmering black, forged and enchanted in the Void. So beautiful was this set that I met his bet with my castle, and in fair game I won. Yet the Prince refused to cede me his armor. Instead, he and his entourage fled from my home forthwith. I followed them but only got so far as this grand gate, beyond which they disappeared. I was called to Arlathan and could not travel to find what I was owed. I had planned to make the journey myself, but with your aid I need not waste my time recovering what is rightfully mine.’

“Andruil is surprised. Is this all the Dread Wolf wants? Certainly, the gate is strange and haunting, but it is not evil to ask to receive what one is rightly owed. The Huntress promises the Dread Wolf that she will get him the armor he is owed, and opens the gate.” The fire goes to a dark purple behind Hellathen, and her voice slows. “Once beyond the gate, she notices the world is dark. She cannot make sense of anything, for this is the Void, home of naught but chaos! The shadowy landscape eats itself and crashes together like the sea, but brave Andruil ventures forward into the mystery. In this strange place she sees no sign of the otherworldly Prince and his entourage. Instead, she slowly becomes enchanted by the indescribable world and its beasts. Oh, yes, there were beasts to hunt! The Void was populated by creatures so wondrous and magnificent that the glowing dragon she had slain seemed paltry and dull! Everywhere she searched bizarre things with multitudinous black gem eyes would peer forth from the shadows, enticing her to chase them.

“The Huntress is drawn to hunt them through the crevices of their strange and incomprehensible land and fell them. She cares not for her mission, but remembers her promise. ‘Surely,’ she thinks, ‘if there is any great Prince in this forsaken place, he will be hunting this grand quarry.’ As she searches the nothingness for the Prince, she takes long and winding detours to chase down the creatures. From her conquests, she takes the hides of beasts and the fabric of the Void to forge herself armor and weapons, battlements to better do her hunt. She slays nine-headed obsidian lions, wyverns whose tails never end, and fish of glass that swim through the sky. They become ever stranger and ever more enticing as she explores the depths of the Void. These adventures are the most exciting and amazing she’s ever had and soon she forgets her deal with the Dread Wolf to find the Prince—she cares only for the sport of the hunt.

“Meanwhile back in this world, the great wilds beyond Arlathan suffer without Andruil’s protection. Great monsters she had once kept at bay with her mighty bow wreak havoc to her people, and frontier lords sworn to her began to war amongst themselves and with nature itself without the balancing guidance of Andruil and her Three Paths. Through it all the Dread Wolf laughs in glee as discord falls across the once peaceful lands. He disgorges the people for the spoils of their misery all as he had planned: Fen’Harel had released the shining dragon to Andruil’s wild as part of a foul plot to draw her away from her lands and her people!

“Back in the Void, Andruil becomes laden with weapons and spoils. All her things are so precious, but they weigh heavy on her form and she can no longer chase creatures which to her delight seem to only grow faster and more wily as her adventures wear on. She thinks that she will hang her trophies in her castle and return to the fray to hunt more. She crosses back from the Void and begins to meander to her palace before she realizes she has forgotten where her palace is. Lost, she soon realizes she does not know where she is or where she came from, and that the world she is in now seems dull and predictable, not like the mesmerizing and ever-challenging landscape of the Void. Yet despite how boring she finds the world, she cannot navigate it. She tries to retrace her footsteps to find the gate to the Void, but only gets further lost. One day as she wanders the forest searching once more to find the gate, she is confronted by none other than the Dread Wolf himself.

“Andruil calls his name. ‘Fen’Harel—just the man I want to see. Where is the gate to the Void? You showed it to me first and must know where it is now. I will do anything. Please, the world is dark and dull and still.’

“‘Must I solve all of your problems?’ Fen’Harel sneers, barely concealing his delight over her misery. ‘Where is the Prince’s armor I am twice now owed? You have not even kept our first promise! Why should I do anything for your benefit now?’

“‘You may have my armor,’ Andruil says, ‘made in the world I seek once again.’ The armor she was once loath to abandon is a cheap price for a path back to Beyond the Beyond, the land of all her dreams, the Huntress thinks. She strips to trousers and a tunic, laying her beautiful armor and all her weapons but her old bow at his feet. ‘Please, accept everything. This bow is all I need once you tell me how to return to that place.’

“‘Why should I do that? I have everything I want of you.’ The Dread Wolf shakes his head. He has already taken her armor, her weapons, and all the wealth of her lands. ‘Our dealings are done,’ he says. On a gust of wind, he and his spoils vanish, leaving the Huntress alone in peasants’ rags. Embarrassed and lost, she wanders solitarily and desperately trying to find some sign of the gate that could bring her back to the beasts that had given her such wonder.”

Lavellan’s eyes blink open just as the fire dies behind Hellathen. She had begun to drift off herself while listening. The First gives long pause and the children jump as it abruptly springs back in a bright gold. “In all this time, her worshippers and all the people of the wilds have been desperately entreating the Creators to find their bold protector. The All-Father Elgar’nan organizes a wide search in the lands of the living, and Falon’Din marches through the lands of the dead. Dirthamen calls his ravens, all-seeing Fear and Death, to survey the world and locate Andruil. June equips the searchers with fine equipment such as spyglasses and great horns to call out for her, and Sylaise ignites a great hearth fire so that the Huntress might follow the light back. Yet the Huntress is nowhere to be seen, because she does not want to be seen. She blends in to the great wilderness like a dark panther, endeavoring to find her gate once more without the intercession of those others on high.

“But eventually, Andruil is borne back home: Ghilan’nian, the mother of the halla, sends her children out into the world to search, quiet and gentle and wise in their own ways. With their kind patience they beckon Andruil from the shadows where she hunts for the gate and at long last she accepts the escort of the halla through her bitter and weeping lands. When at long last the flock reaches the gates of Arlathan, Andruil is brought before the Mother Goddess.

“Mythal looks upon the Huntress and her heart nearly shatters in her chest at her pitiable state. But Mythal remains strong and staid, not allowing herself to falter or weep. ‘What has befallen your wilds, Huntress?’ Mythal asks.”

As Hellathen goes on, Lavellan thinks of the grand temple she had visited so long ago, and of Flemeth with her piercing yellow eyes. Lavellan wonders where the Woman of Many Years is now, whether or not she still walks with the people. Had Flemeth recognized Solas, she wonders? She turns to the man beside her and—there is no man beside her. Solas is _gone_.

Lavellan almost stumbles forward into the midst of the seated children but keeps steady footing as she pulls herself from the low canvas sling seat in a hurry. She hopes Hellathen, who is leaning near to the children to whisper parts of the tale that they giggle over, does not notice. Kelleth and Brydin are leaning against a hut listening as the tale unfolds. Lavellan’s head spins as she edges near to the couple to whisper to them worriedly. “I don’t suppose you saw where Solas got off to?”

Brydin the city elf answers in a hushed voice, “He told us he was headed to the tent Hellathen set up. The poor fellow had been asleep half the time. He said he didn’t want to bother you while you listened to the story when he came past this way.”

Lavellan thanks him and hurries off in the direction of the hut Hellathen had told her about. She thinks of the story she had just heard in which Fen’Harel abandons Andruil to the wilds after getting what he needs of her. What are the chances her cousin chooses a tale about the Void that evening? As she hurries, Lavellan realizes Kelleth is trailing after her. “What do you want?” she demands, her gate barely slowing.

“The mage.”

“What?”

“Your man—“

“My man?” Lavellan scoffs.

Kelleth insists, “I don’t know what’s between the two of you and I don’t care. He’s a mage and a powerful one. Even before Hellathen told me I could tell by the way the carries himself. Your cousin told me all about the odd knowledge he keeps, and you said yourself he knows strange arcana. These past few years have been strange. I’ve met Keepers and mystics with more power than you can imagine. These people can change the weather, or hold dragons to do their bidding. Some were blood mages, I’m sure. But others…” A laugh from his throat jabs at Lavellan. “They’ve truly found the secrets of our people. Between that, and what we have here in Wycome… This city will belong to The People.”

Lavellan stumbles in exhaustion. As she steadies herself she stops to demand, “So you want secrets out of Solas? You don’t even know him.”

“Four years ago a handful of us went on a journey to help some of our own in Orlais recover a helmet that had been stolen from a desecrated grave of an Emerald Knight. We travelled to the Western Wastes chasing the plunderers, and in some ruins there met a hermit. He was one of our people, carrying a secret of Arlathan he had discovered—and three hundred and seventy years old he was kept young by his promise.”

“Who told you that? The hermit?”

“You’re rolling your eyes but I know there’s something going on. It’s coming to a head soon,” Kelleth insists. “You’re part of it. You have to be. We all are, but you—I hear the way the humans talk. They think their Maker has set his eyes on you, that you’ve got some kind of blessing. The shemlen can feel something is happening too, but they don’t understand it.”

“And you do?” Lavellan asks, rousing herself to move again. She wonders if she can chase Solas down in her current state: dinner seems to have energized him. The worst case scenarios regarding what Solas might be up to tumble through her mind. He said he could wait to chase the orb, but what if he had been lying, or had misjudged his own patience? At the best, he actually is asleep. At the worst, he’s a danger to Deshanna if he wants information immediately—he must have heard that she’s staying in the City Hall. And what if Solas has ran off to engage in horrid machinations elsewhere and abandoned her in Wycome? Her thoughts are hardly coherent.

“I know enough. The Creators are locked away, but I believe their foot still rests upon the treadle of the loom as they weave the threads of what’s to come. Perhaps they work through you.” It’s the same dribble she heard about being the Herald of Andraste. The Inquisitor’s old friend trails along after her closely. “When I came to this Clan, I heard what they said about you that you were tempting Fen’Harel because you had some sort of death wish. And everything I saw made that seem true. I thought he’d sunk his fangs into you and made you his thing—without magical deceit how could a slattern who spurned the Old Ways turn so quickly to become such a favorite of the Keeper and the Warleader? But no. They were wise and I was foolish and impatient, I could not follow the arc of the Creators’ designs. You’ve brought us Arlathan again.”

“I already heard this today in my aunt’s ravings.” Lavellan is tired of Kelleth harrying her.

“I didn’t like that mage of yours on my first impression, but now I see that there’s something different about him. There must be some reason for him to come along now, with this odd mission of yours. Maybe he truly knows what the artifact is for and can turn it to work for The People. I know that you have to act for the humans right now. But if one day, the Dalish are to take Wycome for ourselves, under true elvish rule, we’ll need to know—“

Lavellan interrupts,“—so you wanted to know what’s going on with Solas. It turns out he’s Fen’Harel, awoken from thousands of years of slumber to destroy the world.” This is true and Lavellan cannot believe she has let him out of her sight. Solas could be anywhere. “And that’s why I need to go find him. You wouldn’t leave the Dread Wolf unsupervised with your Clan, would you?”

Kelleth stops following alongside her and she leaves him behind as she trudges on. “More mockery,” he excoriates, “Is that all _the_ _Inquisitor_ can afford me?” Lavellan looks back over her shoulder at him for a brief moment and she watches him grimace in disappointment and anger. She had already been sick to her stomach.

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the long delay, I’ve been writing an academic article that’s been eating all my time. Anyways i know this is very long and it could definitely have been cut down considering it’s tangential but i wanted to establish grounds for some conflicts and complications and i was torn between actually posting something and making a concise chapter. Maybe i’ll trim it down, who knows? 
> 
> anyways, hopefully i can resume posting more regularly soon. i have finals in the next two weeks and while i have to study for certifications over the summer i don’t start my job until September so there will be plenty of time for leisure writing.


	12. The Keeper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The new closeness Solas and Lavellan have rekindled is jeopardized when he endangers her in a dream. Chasing the stolen artifact leads the two to Lavellan’s Keeper Deshanna, who has news of a missing Seeker and her own secrets to hide.

Lavellan knows that Solas thinks little of killing—of all her old travel party, apart from Cole, he would do it in the cleanest and calmest way. His lack of trouble is precisely why he is able to lament the necessity. To fight on the front lines one needed to discard their compunctions about killing, and all her companions had long since surmounted the hurdle in their own ways. Depersonalization, focus on duty. Complete detachment. Channeled rage.

She remembers the first person she had ever killed, a human boy. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen. She doesn’t remember which hunting party attacked first. His father, dying at the end of her hahren’s blade, yells at him to run and get the militia. He turns and runs and she knows where he is going, and what a militia will do. She’s heard the stories of what will happen if he sounds the alarm to his town: men on horses will come chase down the Clan and slaughter its old men and little children and their mothers big with little siblings soon-to-be. She is a bad shot and misses his receding figure twice and has twice to reconsider, but the third arrow catches his shoulder. He is still alive but he hasn’t even tried to get up when she catches with him. His eyes are mirrors of hate and fear as they focus on her. She knows she is his whole world. She is at most a year older than him and doesn’t yet have blood writing on her face, but she’s killed enough game to know how to make it quick. The first time had been the hardest.

What was killing like for Solas? Lavellan remembers he has ended millions of lives, destroyed a whole society. He wants to do it again. Would it be easier this time around? Or was it ever truly hard? Solas is more dangerous to her Clan than any human militia could ever be, and she has brought him among them. Solas knows the Keeper might have information he needs, and had heard where she stays—Lavellan realizes the woman’s life might be in danger. In sharp contrast to her predecessor Keeper, Deshanna had always been so good to Lavellan. If the Inquisitor’s indiscretions hurt the Keeper…

She asks those in her Clan who sit out spending their late evenings by the fire if they’ve seen her companion. She prefaces her questions by saying she is in a rush and cannot stop to speak much. “Have you seen my friend? About my height, light skin, not Dalish. No hair. Well, yes eyebrows.” One or two think they might have spotted him, but had not paid him much attention. As strange as he is, Solas is good at blending in. In her wake Lavellan will occasionally catch whispers of “there she goes as rude as ever,” “look how she carries herself. She acts like the shems. Thinks she’s one of them, I bet,” “lost her friend? She’s probably drunk,” and worst of all, “now, now, we should be praying for her.” Lavellan does not care that some in her Clan never came to think better of her when she righted her life, but she cannot stand being pitied. Solas told her some see her as a sullied martyr and she hates the thought.

Perhaps Solas actually had retired to their quarters. He had almost been asleep during the story—she should check at their lodgings before she accepts that her mistake has blossomed into a crisis.

If Solas killed or hurt anyone, or even stole something precious, what would Lavellan say to her Clan? As she expected, Kelleth hadn’t believed the truth, and if anyone did take her word they would see her as a traitor. She would have proved the whisperers right: for her folly and her hubris, she was a toy of Fen’Harel. Plausible lies she could explain calamity with run through her head as she ducks into the hut Hellathen had showed her to, her momentum carrying her into the middle of the little room. A lit lantern affixed to a side of the cabin’s center support beam fills the room with dim orange light but Solas is nowhere to be seen before her. Lavellan’s stomach drops. The panic rising in her spurs an electrified jump when she hears from behind her a voice, barely louder than a whisper: “—that is all. It is vital that you be thorough in your search.”

Lavellan spins around behind her. She is exhausted and gives a tired sob of joy when she lays her eyes upon Solas. He sits in a sling chair placed right near the ajar entry with his legs crossed as he leans back. The folding frame has arms and on one he props an elbow to hold up a bright green sending crystal. The light of its connection dies down while Lavellan takes a deep breath. So much for the vigilance of a warrior and the perception of a hunter! The Inquisitor does not know if the problem is that she is over half a decade out of practice or if it is that everything that had to do with Solas makes her stupid. “There you are,” the mage greets her in his calm and kindly way. He has shed his padded traveller’s vest and rest it over the back of the chair where he sits, and he turns to slip the crystal into one of the many pockets. “My apologies for leaving the fire-pit unannounced. I thought it might be best if I excused myself quietly to manage my affairs.”

Lavellan is very glad she has long since gotten over her aversion to killing because she might be ready to, against all odds, murder Solas. “You! Don’t leave my sight again!” she commands in a low but vehement hiss. Lavellan keeps in mind that the walls of the hut are not particularly thick—even in her disheveled frustration she realizes they will have to speak quietly here lest someone is listening to them.

Solas returns the hush when he evenly responds, “Again, I am sorry that I worried you. Time is of the essence, and I thought I would contact some of my own agents about Yhdris and the cult of Dirthamen before we retired. Many of them are in positions to at the very least begin their work while we rest. Perhaps we will awake tomorrow to good news before we go to see your Keeper.” He does not sound quite convinced that the next day will bring them luck.

Lavellan wonders if good news to Solas is going to be good news to her. She hates how for now she must trust him, and tries to convince herself that if she gathers the right intelligence, she could direct the Inquisition to seize, control, and destroy the orb without his aid or intercession. A thought comes to her. “The story we heard was based on what happened with the Conflux, wasn’t it?”

Solas bows his head in a nod. “Incredibly loosely, yes. I am aware of a few variations on the tale.”

“It’s an incredible coincidence that we hear it now.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

“…are you trying to implicate my cousin in something?”

“I do not think the First is involved in the theft, if that is what you are asking. Though spirits cannot mirror aspects of the Void directly, ancient things in the Fade may remember the Conflux’s impact on this world. Even inside the container, its presence outside the sanctum’s wards likely disturbed some spirits enough for them to echo their fears. One of these memories might have found the First as she dreamed in the Fade and kept the story at the front of her mind. Perhaps that might account for the ominous turn in your aunt’s dreams as well.” Solas seems unsatisfied with his theory. “I should have felt its presence sooner myself. Perhaps the echoes have been traveling only amidst the dreams of the Dalish, finding home in their faith and fantasy? There are reasons, and ways, but still…hm.”

“In the tale she told, Hellathen said that the Void drove people mad. When I fell asleep waiting for you, I saw you talking to the Forgotten Ones and from what you showed me yourself...your memories corroborate that.” Lavellan pauses to try to figure out the best way to word her question before continuing, “When you brought me to the canyon in the Fade, I saw you look into its heart, but you’re not—”

“—not now, no.” Solas swallows a grimace and bows forward where he sits and his shoulders raise with a sighing laugh. Lavellan is somewhat grateful he knew what she was trying to ask. “That moment was the beginning of a very unfortunate fascination.”

Silence draws Lavellan to scan the interior of the hut. It is considerably smaller than her aunt and uncle’s home, and is set with simple furniture of wood and rough cloth, all resting on a thick mat of woven reeds. There are two sling chairs and a couple of mismatched wooden chests pushed alongside the walls of the tent. It resembles a bedroom in a traditional human home more than it does the interior of her aunt and uncle’s hut. The latter had been a place to live, whereas the former merely exists as a place to sleep. The bed looks comfortable—it appears to be some sort of mattress on a low frame piled high with furs for the settling cool of autumn. “One bed.”

“There are two more small bedrolls on the floor over there. I took a look through the storage when I arrived—in the big trunk there are blankets and pillows. This seems a pleasant little hostel for Elvish pilgrims.” From his hunch forward Solas pulls himself to his feet. He stretches out and rolls his neck with a crack once he stands and wanders to the center of the room near the support beam and the table.

As Solas pulls past her, Lavellan follows him closely for a few steps, not quite towards the trunks. “If you want to take the bed, I can sleep on the floor,” she offers. Around the middle of her sentiment his hand comes up to find her stomach, where he begins to absently scratch in circles. She can hardly feel it through her vest and blouse but the pressure it is pleasant still. The nerve he has, after worrying her.

Gauging by the inadvertent little smile that has crept onto Lavellan’s fave, Solas lets the caressing hand move down her waist to her hip and eventually around to her behind, by which he pulls her towards him for a kiss. The tired sloppiness of his lip-lock does little to offset his urgency and his body is tight and rigid against hers. He is making himself miserable again, thinks Lavellan. He is making _her_ miserable—she had been so afraid of him just moments before! Solas asks, “One more mistake to close out the evening?”

Lavellan exhales some of her frustration with Solas in a yawning that blossoms into a grin. It is shameful but it does feel good to be wanted by him, to be adored in her most vulgar and base forms. Her chronically cold and tired body feels like flesh and blood once more when it abuts with his. Lavellan’s tattooed forehead presses to Solas’s bare one and they lean into each other. The Inquisitor feels like she is admitting defeat: “I don’t know if I could manage that right now.” Manage it well, anyways.

“Oh! No, not that,” Solas quickly answers her drowsy contrition. “Though I must say I am flattered at your assumption that _I_ could. I only ask that we share the bed as we did during our earlier repose. You said I should be selfish and act on my desires—so I ask you an undeserved favor.” To break her bemused and incredulous stare at him, he kisses her on the cheek and forces a small smile. “Regardless of whether or not doom is brought upon the world in the coming days or weeks we cannot reconvene after this business is revolved. For now I am capable of desiring your proximity and if you would allow me I intend to enjoy it.”

The last part of the mage’s statement bothers Lavellan but she does not want to cause trouble—not now. She is uneasy by how eager she is to curl herself up alongside a man who had frightened her into rage. He had been the one that left her those many years ago, and now he is so eager to chase her attentions. “It’s like you only want me when the world’s ending,” Lavellan sighs. She gives a long hum as if she is thinking to swallow down an ambient sense of terror. “I guess keeping watch on you through the night will be easier if we spoon.”

Solas gives a small chuckle and gazes down towards the floor almost wistfully. “Indeed.” He swallows a wince of pain before he commands her, “Sit down.” He ushers Lavellan into one of the sling chairs. Before her he falls to his knees to undo the fastenings on her boots. He peers up at her from his position as he slips each shoe off and her stomach twists a little. He is playing at service or perhaps even submission but Lavellan feels as if she is being toyed with, especially as he guides her to lean back in the seat with one hand as he undoes her trouser front with the other. The socks come with as the garment is stripped away from under her, and Solas’s hands return to her bare thighs for a moment. He runs both hands along her left leg before allowing his right hand to turn and stroke the inside of the other. The flesh is still cold from the autumn chill outside and his touch is wonderfully warm, especially as he traces upwards towards the hem of her smallclothes. From between her legs he straightens his posture and faces up towards her, inviting her to kiss him. When she takes what he is offering, his hands fall on her and he uses the connection of their kiss to guide her to stand

Solas is troublingly good at leading her around with his affections, Lavellan thinks as he helps her out of her vest and begins to unbutton her blouse. “It’s easier to detach the prosthetic and slide it out through the arm than it is to pull the shirt over it,” she teaches him as he begins to peel away her shirt. “After you unbutton the cuff, the hole is big enough that all the open straps will just pull through.” The removal of garments is much more gentle and easy than it had been in their earlier rush to couple, yet she still instinctively balks when he begins the task of removing her prosthetic. His fingers jump back when she flinches.

“You are self-conscious about your arm. I…noticed earlier.”

Lavellan forces a laugh. “I’ve never been self-conscious about anything in my life.”

He frowns and draws back. Lavellan braces herself, expecting an accusation of lying. Solas knows her fears and insecurities far too well: a decade ago she had trusted him with all of them and so foolishly believed he would never leave her side. Solas gives his own forced laugh. “Of course. How could I have forgotten?”

It is all his fault she has no arm, that she feels lost. She wants to hate him but she can’t in this moment, not without loathing herself for the part that loved him and still loves him, that is fantastically happy to coil around him. Perhaps if there is fate, they were made to destroy one another. She will find a way to destroy him so she will not be torn to pieces alone. The promise is sick and hollow and it rings absurd after he has so quietly spent the evening with her Clan and family. She puts her good hand to use, fiddling with the straps of her prosthetic to loose it from her body. It is designed to come off and on easily but her fingers are clumsy and shaky.

His hands rest on hers and she cedes to him once more. Lavellan tries to relax as he eases her out of the cloth and leather webbing and a weight comes off her shoulders as he takes her prosthetic in hand, separating with her to carefully set the arm aside on the table. Solas’s eyes dart between the disconnected fake arm and the stump of Lavellan’s left arm where it ends just beneath the elbow. He comes towards her again and his hands run over the skin of her arms down from her shoulders. He is careful as he approaches the truncation but when, with great effort, she stays steady he caresses what remains of her forearm as his other hand runs down her side before wrapping her in his arms.

It almost feels natural. Lavellan thanks Solas by turning to kiss him on the cheek, and they linger in an embrace haunted by their absurd and terrible situation. Solas is fully dressed and Lavellan is in her smalls, and she feels unbearably soft and malleable. She feels the itchy texture of his sweater on her chest and stomach and the rough touch of his fingerless gloves on the small of her back makes her bristle.

“I can handle taking my own clothing off,” Solas tells her when they break from one another. Lavellan sits down on the bed where she begins to remove her smallclothes with her one hand. She has not brought a change and does not want to sleep in them. The mattress beneath the furs is thick and filled, most likely, with straw. It is much more comfortable than the layered woven mats she’d slept on growing up.

“Speaking of unfortunate fascinations,” the mage ventures. Lavellan is too busy watching the arch of his back and the upwards stretching of his shoulders as he pulls his shirt over his head to guess where this is going. His arms tangle in the fabric over his head before he discards the garment. Her eyes linger on the mottled purple spotting the pale slope of his neck and she has the satisfaction a vandal might incur from carving her name in the base of a monument—a sentiment she finds suitably juvenile. Turning towards her, he pulls at the strings lacing the front of his legging pants. “I was unaware that I had met such a dedicated admirer those long years ago in Haven.”

A shiver of embarrassment catches Lavellan and she crosses her arms the best she can over her chest. Through her rising fluster she teases, “You couldn’t figure out my favorite Creator?”

Bare except for his smallclothes, Solas joins her on the bed, pushing her gently over onto the mattress so he can crawl atop her and straddle her low on her stomach. Even if he does not want sex now he apparently does want to play. She has slept alone for so long and now her favorite Creator bows himself over to give her a little peck on the bridge of her crooked nose. “I was able to make some inferences from our early discussions of Dalish mythology,” Solas admits, “but I opted not to read into the tattoo.”

“Do I get your blessings?” To answer Solas presses Lavellan to the bed by a wrist and an elbow and kisses her deeply. She breathes a wretched giggle appreciatively into his lips. The truth of the Dread Wolf is somewhat endearing: Solas was a man who became a legend, so much like she had done but so much greater. The kindred spirit she had longed for is real, folded neatly into her long-standing object of fantasy—he has come just for her. Reality mars the truth and the kiss with her long-promised prince is bittersweet. When they are touching Lavellan does not care what monstrous things he has done in the past, but if he truly wanted her he would give her and her memory his future. She bucks her hips against him to simmer in the friction and feels robbed when the kiss ends. As tired as she is perhaps she does want him to fuck her once more: not thinking about anything other than how their bodies intersect might do her well. “And here I thought you didn’t like being worshipped.”

Solas sits straight up atop Lavellan to observe her, his thighs splayed open to mount his wiggling perch. He lets his head roll back when she lightly strokes the raised line where his smalls are just beginning to grow taut, his shoulders relaxing with a heave as his eyes drop shut. “I believe I am reviled more than I am worshipped,” he says. “Regardless of whether you revile or worship me, you do it so well when you see it fit to behave. Ah—” He shivers in a heaving wave.

He lets out a shuddering little yelp and his cock noticeably twitches when her hand travels up his thigh inside the garment to massage a sensitive spot in the inside joint of his hip. “Behaving?” Lavellan teases. “Is that what you call this?” She looks upon the man atop her, shivering and flush in his smallclothes and dappled with scars and pale freckles down his arms. He is so lovely to her.

His lips part to let out a moan that sheds its humming pleasure into a yawn. Mere minutes prior she had been afraid of him, of what he might do. Solas stretches and falls away from Lavellan’s caress. “Or maybe it is your misbehavior that I delight in. Forgive me. I am too tired to try and charm you properly.” He pulls aside the fur blankets and flops down at her side. Lavellan follows him under and he scoops her up to hug his back to her chest before pulling the blankets back over them. When they settle, Solas presses his lips to her left shoulder which is spangled with a lupine constellation. “This piece to honor one of the Evanuris is done in blood-writing,” he observes. “You stole the ink?”

She doesn’t answer the question. Her accusation is almost saccharine: “You like it.”

Solas does not deny that. “In some perverse sense, yes. The idea of a person’s skin—a lover’s skin especially—bearing marks of dedication to me is…not one I should savor.” Lavellan knows what he is admitting to as he tightens his arms around her body to hold her close. Like most men Solas is titillated by the illusion of possessing his bedmate. Ownership of any person is abhorrent to Solas by nature, and Lavellan can feel the tension between his principles and his primal fantasy. But is it a fantasy? Lavellan is stained with his magic and has had her body warped by his hands. He stalks her dreams and haunts her thoughts, omnipresent in reverie and legend from her papoose to presumably her grave. He had given her the whole world and has sworn to take her last breath. It is all so excellently awful. Lavellan is torn between running from Solas and from hiding in his arms until she dies. Both impulses make her feel like a coward.

The Inquisitor sighs and uses her good hand to squeeze one of Solas’s. “As silly as it is sometimes I worry there actually is something at work in you that I can’t understand, some grand plan beyond anything I could ever know. Not only would there be some insurmountable god, but he’s toying with me. Imagine if that were you—at that point I might as well thank you for turning your gaze upon me. You would be my animating purpose: my triumphs and my misery would be all yours, a testament to the works you could do.”

Solas is silent for a long moment. His lips press behind her pointed ear and she can feel his half-arousal against her back as he works his way down her neck. With his fingers combed through her thick dark hair, at last he asks, “Do you like that?”

He pairs the sentiment with a nip to the sensitive blade of her ear and she writhes against him, seething in her little rush of pleasure. “I hate it so much I can feel my blood boil in my veins.”

She feels him laugh against her and he tightens his grasp. “Perfect.” Presumably at his will the lantern flickers out.

* * *

Above the Inquisitor’s head hangs a black and starless sky, and the smooth surface beneath her feet glows white like the moon. The hoary expanse bathing her in its own rising and murky light stretches forever, flat and desolate.

Lavellan is not alone in this sanitary and silent world. Her company is far away, but not so far—perhaps one hundred paces separate her from a hunched figure with its darkly cloaked back turned her way. Her footfalls make no sound but they grow eager and hurried as she pulls herself nearer, her desire to see the other spikes in a hollow but joyous crescendo. She cannot tell if her heart or her ears buzzes but she brims with an anxious ecstasy.

The figure looms affixed, staring down into an open onyx-black box with its lid strewn on the effervescent ground. Over the cloaked shoulder, the Inquisitor peers into the container and sees that it is empty. The figure turns and looks up at Lavellan and he would be divinely beautiful if he were not warped and corroding. Peaking through limp copper strands of his long and unbound hair are cavities in his visage that slowly exude a viscous inky gel. Pieces of the man are missing and Lavellan fixates upon the indent in his face where a lavender-grey eye once was. The hole chisels into one dark cheekbone with its tar-black horror. In the cavity a delicate crimson lattice peeks from the dark substance like doomed sprouts through the spring’s lingering snow. Lavellan is drawn in by the sight and she thinks he might be beautiful still. Huddled below her he turns to look at her and slowly straightens his body so that the two stand face to face. his cloak falls aside and he is cavity-chested. The space is filled with ominous residue. His hands are as dark as coal, pitch as the sky above. They exude a dull shine like clouded glass, reflecting the glowing landscape. Lavellan remains transfixed and toddles towards the man’s disintegrating form.

From her lips his name comes quietly: “Solas.” Lavellan does not need to ask if the strange and fragmented man is truly him: she can feel it. She wraps her two arms around herself to stop herself from running to embrace him. If she touches him, will he shatter? She thinks of nodes of the long-gone red lyrium sprouting forth from cave walls, clattering down in flake shards. He might explode and disperse into similar pieces. Or perhaps his flesh will singe into hers and burn her away. The thought is clean and enticing, like the thought of throwing herself from a tower to see when she drops into the great blue sky if she might rise again in flight. Through the call she holds herself still.

Solas watches over her as she shivers trying to hold herself in place. As if to apologize, he explains, “I thought looking in this place might help our investigation. The search did not do me any good. Everything important is gone. What I once had was torn away from me against my will and destroyed.”

“What you once had?” she echoes. She thinks she can sink into him, fill his visible gaps as he can fill her invisible ones, sickly and honeycombed in her inside. Her thighs tremble and her stomach knots. There is something horrifically wrong here and she is thrilled for it to try to consume her. She is thrilled to fight against it.

“It was…for the best. Most likely.” Solas casts his face downward, a corner of his mouth raising. Not a trace of his typical sadness haunts the slick and mirthful grin and something about that is sickeningly alluring to Lavellan. His plush lips call enticing danger to Lavellan, like ripe and poison berries flushed in exotic hues. She wants to stain her teeth and fingers dark with him, to sate herself by swallowing down his sweet and viscous toxin. Solas’s voice hones itself further into deadly anger and wanting: “I can feel the empty space, the shape of the things that were taken. Cruel and hollow contours are embossed in my heart and mind. What remains is real. It is fragmentary, corrupting, and I should not have been allowed to keep it. Enough knowledge remains to breed fear within me, as they intended. But they didn’t understand the way fear is wedded with desire.” Lavellan stares into one grey eye and one hollow, murky indent. Solas shudders, or perhaps the world around him does. Something in Lavellan tells her that she is going to collapse in on herself if she does not collide with him. He seems to beckon with his own voice when he addresses her: “You understand, Inquisitor, though you will not accept it.”

“Accept what?” Her voice is hoarse. She tries to steel herself: “Explain.”

He flickers like a candle, the image giving way with a flash of the Fade’s foggy green. Remaining eye wide he stands before her when he solidifies again in his strange and broken form. “You blush when your blood boils.” A hand, char-dark and near translucent, reaches out and he runs two fingers along her hairline and down her cheek. His skin—it doesn’t feel like skin, but it does not feel like glass or anything she can identify—is rough and jagged but frictionless and cold to the touch. “What do you think you would do if you came before a true god?”

She leans into his touch, craning her neck to give his strange caress access. Their bodies are close together but the trepidation she feels is different from her excitement before any of their prior intimacies. It is not sex, banal and profane, that she anticipates. What beckons her is formless and unknown but her wanting for it is excruciatingly libidinal. It feels at once like a destructive and reproductive urge. He calls her to him without words from within. She summons a hushed protest, both against his words and his draw. “You don’t believe in gods either.”

“Not as you would conceive of them, no.” Solas tilts her head up ever slightly and she seethes. From her raised and compressing shoulders to the curling soles of her feet her body is racked by an unbearable tension. From her cheek he drops his hand to brush her short but unruly hair behind her ear. His hands shake and tremble near as much as she does as he traces the bottom of the ear’s long blade down to slink around to the nape of her neck. “You surround yourself with Andrasteans,” he suggests. “Think upon the tale of their Blessed Bride, and think upon what you might have faced if at the Temple of Sacred Ashes you truly had been Chosen by some Maker.”

Something inside her gives an unbearable lurch at his suggestion to entertain the hypothetical. It is a ridiculous scenario for Solas of all people to posit and there must be a purpose behind it. She wants to know, to understand him, but she shies from what she thinks must be a trap. “I don’t—“ her refutation is weak but she raises her voice, “—this has nothing to do with anything.” She stares upon his corroded face, held both in thrall and by his dark and corrupted hands. Her eyes creep towards the little black box, its unadorned lid ajar on the celestial white ground.

His grip drops slowly, drawing her attention back to his face. “Or would you rather dream of your Dread Wolf?” Lavellan swallows as his hands settle on either side of her neck and slowly shift, together and tighter. His whole flickers again in a green and red and when he solidifies his hands have restricted slightly, squeezing the sides of her throat. Had she been breathing in the Fade before? She is certainly breathing now, air coursing through his grasp. Her heart, or something within her projection of herself is certainly beating, its thumps wetter and crueler here than the real one employed in pumping the blood of her body. She does not balk. Solas tilts close to speak into her ear and when he is close she can feel something profoundly wrong in his voice. “Turn your mind from the fool who sleeps beside you and toward your imagined legends, to the thing that slips omnipresent through shadows and with abandon dispenses cruelties fate and fortune might bestow. If such a monster had come for you, what might you have beholden? Though you loathe the thought you still look exhaustively for a god or its near equivalent in me! Why?”

Seething in his grasp and against his stomach Lavellan has an answer. “If there is a true god, I won’t hide from it.” It sounds brave but a shameful and needy anticipation lurks inside her declaration.

Lavellan feels Solas smile against her cheek. It rends her inside when he presses a kiss upon her cheekbone and tells her, “I want to give you your freedom.” Solas keeps his grip on Lavellan and she wants him to truly choke her. It will be a relief when he begins. She can struggle then against him and against the horrid singing that so sweetly entreats her unto him. She has dreamed of dying before—what would happen if he wrung the life from her? The thought evokes a loathing shudder in her. Will she wake up to find herself pressed to his chest and tucked in his arms? Solas has promised to be Lavellan’s end in the waking world. If he takes you, the song in her head wordlessly promises, you can be be part of him forever. Wouldn’t that be so wonderful? She raises her own hands to grasp his wrists.

“What part of my freedom is yours to give to me?” The pulsing inside Lavellan’s head tells her that if only she would give in and listen to it she might know.

The warped and dissolving image of Solas laughs a joyous laugh that folds itself into the thick and throbbing call. He rests his forehead against hers and when she looks down at his lips the smile below the horrible cavity has become unmistakably kind and tender. He makes a quiet and loving vow: “You will see. I promise.” When he claims her lips with his her world rings in beautiful silence. He tastes sweet and metallic like strawberry jam and blood and she drinks it in with a lascivious and shared open-mouthed kiss. Lavellan closes her eyes to a sea of murky shining blackness as she accepts that through their embrace she is sinking into the cavity in his chest, into him. As his hands compress her throat she opens like a flower in bloom cracked to behold the fiery majesty of the sun. There is yawning space within Lavellan to take in Solas’s millennia and she is overwhelmed by the terrifying need to be glut with him, pulled taut with all he is. With her head light and clear she knows that this, as desperately as she yearns for it, will destroy her. She must pull away but she cannot release his wrists.

With the first swell of panic and fight rising in her, Lavellan is shocked as a weight claps down on her shoulder. She is spun to be pulled out from amidst her lover. Her mind and body primed to struggle, she reels from the separation as she again can breathe. A heavy shroud, thick and comforting like velvet curtains and as ephemeral as fog, falls around her. The world is a whirl of at first green that splits itself and gives way to shining gold and blue.

In this new world Lavellan finds herself face again with Solas. As he withdraws his hand from her, Lavellan realizes that the old man is in one piece. Behind him a field of golden reeds ripples in the midday light. The breeze here is warm and gentle and above the two elves puffy white clouds roll by on lackadaisical parade. Amidst the idyllic grassy expanse, Solas also holds tense in panic. His big grey eyes, familiar and present, are wide in horror as if an arrow had grazed his temple, passing along a mere inch from death. “You should not have come near me!” he exclaims, dismay peaking in his voice.

Lavellan is repelled physically by the outburst. She roils backwards, flattening the thigh-deep prairie grasses where she stumbles. In the other place she had almost forgotten, even as she stared right at him, about his glassy limbs and dark cavities but he is whole now and the grotesque image of his corroding body is foisted on her mind. Lavellan doubts her recollection as it begins to dissolve, gone with the song that had been pressed into her mind. She does remember he had begun to choke her. She remembers that she wanted it and a deep anger wracks her. Defensively Lavellan snarls, “What are you talking about? I had no—“

“—no, no!” An alarmed Solas follows Lavellan’s retreat forward but he catches himself before he reaches to touch her. “The blame for this should not—it absolutely does not—rest with you.” He averts his gaze to look out over their surroundings but casts his eyes downward. Lavellan, shivers subsiding, follows his line of sight. The grasses flag and bow in the rustling wind carried by soft cresting waves of gold. A billowing cloud in the sky floats indolently between the sun and the prairie below, swaddling them in the cool blanket of a gentle shadow. Her anger deflates as Lavellan watches the mage gingerly scratch the back of his bald head. He closes his eyes for a long moment and his face contorts in miserable frustration. In the new calm Solas demands in little more than a whisper, “Do you feel as if anything is different? Are you hurt?”

Lavellan knows what Solas wants to hear. “Don’t worry. You didn’t hurt me.” Not this time, not now. She aches with him when, against her better judgement, she takes him in her arms.

* * *

 

As Lavellan comes to, she notices the absence of Solas’s weight and warmth, and of his breath’s soft rhythm beside her. Lavellan is alone where she lays between the furs and straw mattress. She does not have time to give herself over to alarm, as her ally and nemesis sits before her cross-legged on the foot of the bed. Solas is fully dressed in his raggedy apostate ensemble and fiddles with the dowsing device in his lap.

Lavellan watches Solas for a long moment from where she lays and when she shifts he turns his attention to her. He visits upon her a plaintive stare and even fresh from a deadened sleep Lavellan can tell that there is something the matter with him. After a long pause he greets her in a sore and tender way. “Adahlen. Good morning.”

Even though Lavellan aches as she pulls herself to sit up, she tries to cheer Solas with a lighthearted little joke. “I know it’s been eight years since we last spent the night together, but I never thought I would see it—you’re up before me.”

He returns the jape rather sourly: “I decided I might rise early and spare you the trouble of making an attempt to kill me in my sleep.”

“You think I’d need to resort to that to stop you?” Lavellan scoffs. Memories of a high dragon unwillingly raise inside her. The behemoth had been curled at rest in the third Ring of the Sun, settled in her repose under a thin dusting of the Emprise’s morning snow that melts upon her heated hide in a sparse mist. Lavellan remembers standing in an archway of the crumbling coliseum, looking down at the creature as its great scaled shoulders heaved with slow and easy breathing.

Lavellan cannot imagine slaying a dragon in her current state, not even a sleeping one. It feels like work to stretch her legs beneath the covers. Solas must have seen something in the Fade he did not like, Lavellan thinks. He had been so cuddly and affectionate the night before and now he has become distant. “Besides,” Lavellan continues, lifting her arm and a half over her head sluggishly and achingly, “I think I’m going to need you to help solve this Conflux problem. Until I work out a solution on my own, that is.” On the furs next to Solas she notices a small folded wad of cloth that she does not recognize from their lodgings. “You went outside,” she accuses. So much for a shared bed allowing her to monitor him.

Solas nods at the accusation. “My apologies. I had to clear my head. I did not leave the Campgrounds, however, and if you wish to track my movements, enough elves have been up stirring to account for all my movements this morning,” he says. Solas flips over a corner of the napkin and inside is a golden flat of bread. “Your aunt all but accosted me to ask that I bring these fire-cakes to you. She did apologize to me, and wishes to do the same for you.” He takes the bundle up in his hands to offer it to Lavellan.

“I’m not hungry.” Lavellan cannot imagine leaning forward to get the cake herself. Her energy had been so good the previous day and now she feels as if she may not be able to get out of bed. “And I guess I’ll deal with my family eventually.”

“You should eat. You need to care for yourself.” The advice seems patronizing. “...How much of your dream from last night do you remember?” he asks, hesitating and then finishing the question abruptly.

Lavellan tries to think back on the prior night. She is certain of having had a dream...maybe. She cannot recall being in the Fade at all. “None of it. I think.”

Solas stares at her for a long moment and when he is satisfied with that he seems troubled and relieved at once. “Hm. Well, it is not at all unusual to fail to retain memories from parts of the Fade an inexperienced traveller visits accidentally.”

Her recollection of the Court of the Forgotten Ones is foggy as well, Lavellan thinks, and is anchored in her memories by Solas’s jewelry. “…did something happen?”

The next lengthy silence Solas allows implies a ‘yes’ before he manages to gather his words. “Last night I decided I should access through the Fade the memories of the Conflux that I keep cordoned from my consciousness. I thought that they might help us in our search.”

“...cordoned from your consciousness?”

“I believe that no knowledge is inherently dangerous, but some things are…easily mishandled.” Solas admits, “In a few rare occasions, I have been honest with myself about my lack of self-control and as such I thought to put a number of memories to the side so I might not distract myself with them. I suppose such things also attract demons when left open to the whole of the Fade, and I did not want to expose myself to that particular nuisance…” He trails off and looks up at the roof of the hut. Good luck charms of Lavellan’s People hang down from the rafters above.

Solas made some sort of mistake, Lavellan realizes, just as he is prone to doing. “Did you turn anything up?”

“No,” he replies, “nothing useful.” The answer disappoints Lavellan.

“And I was there?” Lavellan takes a long moment, desperately trying to find pieces of the previous night. Eventually she hears a song but not its melody, feels Solas’s hands but not his touch. “I…I saw you,” she says. In her memory, his face begins to dissolve in vicious acidic black. Even as she reflects those sparse images and sensations slip away like sand through her fingers or water through a sieve. She tries to chase the remnants—tiny grains and droplets, fractions of her experience. Lavellan finds herself involuntarily touching her neck and speaks before everything is gone. “Wait, that doesn’t seem right. A demon with your face?”

“No,” answers Solas once more. “What you met was me—nothing and nobody else.”

* * *

  
When the Inquisitor arrives to the Great Hall of Council in Wycome, she is greeted by the bustle and disarray of renovations. She and Solas must search amidst the scaffolding to find guards on duty able to give them access to the Councilors’ Wing that hosts offices and overnight quarters. Lavellan had slept longer than she had planned and when the two enter the grand foyer it is buzzing with activity, Wycome citizens rushing to and from clerks’ offices and court calls between busied workmen. Beneath Lavellan’s boots and Solas’s bare feet lie checkered tiles of white and fawn-colored marble, and the coastal city’s Hall is replete with fish motifs. Statues of Wycome’s historical heroes are set back in their perches against the limestone walls. Much of this décor is under the scaffolds are covered by canvas and sheets, but some peeks through to greet the guests. Thick wrested ropes cordon off the staircase, which has had its bannister removed.

“We won’t need an escort up, no,” Lavellan tells a barrel-chested guard. He had not recognized her as the Inquisitor and thus it had been difficult to divert the guard’s attention from his duty of shouting at two men carrying a pallet of paints to tell them that he didn’t care where they put the delivery down—just so long as it wasn’t here. In Wycome it is odd but not unthinkable for a Dalish elf to wear fine vestments and walk like she is on business, and she had fiddled with the opposable fingers on her prosthetic in front of him until he caught on rather than asserting her identity. She had not bothered to put on her gloves that morning and the guard had spent a long moment transfixed by the metal balls and joints of the piece. “You can just tell us how to get there.” Lavellan has been up to Deshanna’s office in the past, but never through the Hall’s main entrance. She is eager to see the Keeper. She had been a source of guidance and compassion through her troubled adolescence.

The guard nods from behind his helmet and voluminous sand-colored mustache. Though Lavellan has not reprimanded him, the guard speaks hurriedly and apologetically. “Yes, Your Worship. The fastest way to Councilor Lavellan’s quarters will take up the grand staircase. I don’t let people around the rope while they’re putting the new rail in, but it’s safe if you’d like to go that way, Your Worship, but watch your step. You’ll be looking for another one of our boys up there. Galtero will have the keys to the Wing and can give you directions to the Councilor’s office. If he has any questions, tell him Willamar—that’s me, Willamar—approved you to come up.”

“Your work is appreciated, guardsman,” thanks Solas. He’s always had better manners than her for strangers, Lavellan thinks as she nods her own thanks to the man.

Lavellan is feeling tired and sick and is eager to take her leave. Her shoulders tighten and she locks her knees when the mustachioed guard begins talking again. It comes off as sycophantic when he commends her for being willing to walk alone: “Thank you for letting me tend to my work. There’s so much to watch here, with all the bustle and the renovations. To run the best security in the Marches, I tend to chaperone folks off the street when they ask to come up, Your Worship,” he says, and by ‘folks off the streets,’ Lavellan wonders if he means ‘elves’ especially, “and I’d be remiss to let most anyone head through unsupervised, but I don’t think the Inquisitor’s going to be carrying decorations off or committing murder on the premises.”

Casting his eyes up towards the ornate ceiling, a still grim-looking Solas says, “You would think, wouldn’t you?” Perhaps the mage is remembering the time their small band of adventurers had all but ransacked the Winter Palace at Halamshiral trying to thwart an assassination plot against the Orlesian Empress. They had pocketed, among other things, a number of charmed halla statues, turned out half the court’s private affairs, and spattered most available surfaces with the blood of mercenaries that had flooded the palace during the attempted coup. In the days of the War, Lavellan was freshly drunk on grandeur and at the height of her youth and energy. Her adventures had seemed so splendid and glorious and she wonders if she has made her brilliant, glittery feats up.

Lavellan suppresses irritability to playfully feign offense: “Hey, hey. You watch that.” When he glances back at her Solas returns her fake umbrage with a little grin. Lavellan cannot take comfort in the expression, as it quickly dies back down into a frown under his tired eyes. Something is very much the matter.

The guard with the sandy mustache laughs at the silly elves and with unctuous thanks he retreats back into some hole in the scaffolding as the Inquisitor and her guest step around the rope to climb the stairs. Halfway up she must stop—her knees clatter and ache as she is hit by a wave of exhaustion. She shouldn’t be so tired. They rode a carriage through the city and she had hardly walked. Solas offers her his arm for support, and she declines.

Once they are inside, the Councilor’s Wing is quiet apart from the humming of a woman applying a fresh coat of light blue paint to the walls in the hallway. The wainscoting seems to have also been freshly finished and the corridor reeks of lacquer.

“The work is in preparation for the upcoming Synod, I assume.” Solas glances around the hallway to observe their surroundings. His voice drops a little when he continues, “I know you have sent a number of experts from across the continent here to work with the Councilors. From what I understand hosting a successful congress will serve as a great economic and diplomatic boon to the city. Do you expect the Dalish to play along to earn Wycome the favor of human Marcher powers?”

“If Deshanna has anything to do with it, they will,” Lavellan hopes aloud. “She spent almost ten years of her life away from the Dalish before she came alone to an Arlathvhen and left as the First of Clan Lavellan. She’s not so myopic as the rest.” Clan Lavellan had survived their arrival in Wycome because Deshanna had known how to take instruction and cue from the diplomatic and military forces the Inquisition had sent, and how to make her people do the same.

“In that time it would have been risky for a mage to live at large—the templars only turned blind eyes to the Dalish as long as they stayed deep in the wilds with their Clans. I take it she was a mercenary?” Solas asks.

“The polite way she’s phrased it is that she was chartered security for expeditions, but yes,” Lavellan says. She stops at a little looking glass in the hallway and uses her good hand to adjust her hair to cover the fading purple mark on high on her jawline that had embarrassed her in front of her family. Her sable curls do not have quite the length to obscure the spot securely. “She knows how the world outside the Clans work. After all, she was the one that sent me to the Conclave.”

“From what I surmise, she did it for you as much as she did it for the Clan.” Solas stands behind Lavellan and watches her fiddle with her hair in the mirror. He has been unusually dour this morning but he laughs at her consternation. “Turn your face to look at me,” he requests. Lavellan tilts her head towards him and he lifts a hand to run the fingers poking forth from his glove along her jawline. She feels a tingling in her skin and for a moment feels paranoid that when she looks in the mirror her tattoos will have vanished along with the mark.

An odd disappointment tinges the relief the Inquisitor feels when she peeks again to the looking glass to see the green lines of her vallaslin still on her face and the little mark gone. “You might want to get your neck,” Lavellan says. She reaches up to rest her good right hand on the mark and though he had moments ago laid his hands on her he shies from the touch. “Solas, what’s the—“

In a quick but awkward motion he grabs her hand before she can withdraw it entirely and holds it tight. “—nothing at all,” he answers. She can feel a shake in him stilling as he remains there, her palm clasped in his.

“Last night in the Fade. It was that bad?” she asks, and he responds by bringing her hand to his mouth and kissing it lightly before releasing her. “You can tell me more about it.”

He doesn’t answer, only briefly apologizing before pulling away down the hallway. As in an afterthought, he touches his own to his neck and when his hand is gone so are the mottled purple spots.

Deshanna’s office is at the top of another staircase that rises from a long hall in the Councilors’ Wing. A sign on the door says, “The Councilor Is In Her Office — Public Calls Allowed — KNOCK PLEASE.” Lavellan knocks the back of her prosthetic against the door to make a dull and loud thud, barely stifled by her glove.

“Andaran—come in!” The voice rasps before bursting into a series of wet and sputtering coughs. “Ara seranna-ma,” the woman behind the door apologizes as the two enter the office. The Keeper looks up from behind a kerchief over the piles of paper and the big tea kettle resting before her on her desk and almost jumps in surprise. Deshanna exudes a familiar warmth. The aging woman has agate eyes, and her skin is a toasty olive marked by golden-brown tattoos. Her coarse hair, now wholly grey, is tied back into a low bun, and she dresses in fine robes of urban cut that are heavily embroidered with Dalish motifs. She smiles a bright and blooming smile that lightens her eyes and raises her drooping form. “Da’len! I should have known: whose hand apart from yours would make that clatter? I did not expect to see you until next month!” She stands from her desk and sweeps her way over to the two visitors in her trailing rust-red robe, her sock-clad feet padding on the worn carpet. The Keeper’s polished and translucent stone bracelets clack against one another when she lays her hand on Lavellan’s shoulder lightly, bowing her head in greeting. “How long are you for the city of Wycome?”

“Not long at all—it was already dark when I arrived at the Campgrounds last night. I was disappointed to hear from my family that I’d have to wait until sunrise to visit with you, Keeper,” Lavellan explains with a smile on her face. She glances around the office, which is much more well-decorated than it had been the last she visited. Lavellan thinks the design has been well-considered. It is palatably human in shape but Elvish in detail. Between where they stand and Deshanna’s great oaken desk, there is a small seating area with a couch, cushioned chairs, and a low table that hosts Dalish pottery that has been repurposed as a vase and filled with bright autumn flowers. Dalish tapestries and crafts hang from the walls, but the Elvish things have not replaced or covered an old human portrait depicting one of Wycome’s beloved Founders, a bearded man in captain’s garb. Only two walls are so decorated: one is a stretch made entirely of windows that look out into the Hall’s courtyard, and the other is lined entirely by a structure comprised of cabinets and bookshelves stacked with law books and histories. “Everything is well, hahren?”

“Everything is well, yes, but so hurried! This afternoon I must hear from city planners about their intent to build more docks at the harbors before the Synod—we vote on the matter tomorrow—and in the evening, a dinner with the Councilors from the alienage to discuss Elvish commerce.” Deshanna offers some information about her two sons. They are in their early twenties and are not currently with the Clan—it is easy to see the outside world when you know where your People are going to be. One travels exploring Second Kingdom ruins in the same party as Hellathen’s betrothed, and the other studies with Fiona in the College of Enchanters writing a thesis on Dalish magic. Lavellan has seen the latter more recently than his mother. After a break for coughing, Deshanna gives sparse commentary about the pros and cons of developments at the harbor and about a proposal she is writing to have Dalish beverages sold at the Founder’s Day Celebration exempted from the city’s excise tax.

“I do not suppose you have travelled here just to pass time with an old woman. But first, who is your companion?” There’s a wry and humored note in her voice as she appraises Solas, who as he often does has patiently stood in silence. Under her scrutiny he does not waver or balk. “Andaran-atishan—it was improper of me to leave you waiting for welcome. I am Deshanna Istimaethoriel, Keeper of Clan Lavellan and Councilor to the City of Wycome. What is your name and why has ma da’len brought you here in tow?”

Solas gives a polite bow of his head. “I am called Solas. Before the Circles were abolished, I lived as an apostate—but now without that designation I suppose I can just be described as a mage.” He sounds rote and flat, telling no lies but avoiding outing himself as a malevolent deity. “During the War of the past decade, I joined with the Inquisition to offer my knowledge of the arcane and esoteric. I have since left the Inquisitor’s direct employ but collaborate with her now as a consultant of sorts.”

“You were at the Campgrounds last night?” Deshanna asks. “I assume Mir’ana and Irakli were excited that their niece came with an Elvish man in tow.”

“Excited and summarily disappointed,” confirms Solas.

“They’ve been driving Hellathen mad, haven’t they?” Lavellan asks.

Deshanna laughs and it brings forth an ugly sputtering cough from deep in her chest.

“Are you—“

“—yes, da’len, I am well. No worse for wear than usual, anyways. Excuse me. Allow me to sit and take a drink of tea. I think my kettle should be done steeping.” She trails back to the desk and sits in her armchair behind it to lift the lid of the kettle and remove a small cloth bag of leaves, which she sets on a napkin-lined tray. There is no obvious source of heat for the kettle and the water likely had been warmed by magic—Lavellan wonders how non-Dalish visitors to her office take to such a sight. From what Lavellan understands, many in the city are unaware that Dalish Keepers are mages and Deshanna does not volunteer that information. Most people are still wary of magic. Deshanna shakes her head and her voice waivers as she goes on, “Your aunt and uncle think both of you girls are too bound to your work. Yet what Hellathen does within Wycome and what you do beyond the city limits serves the future of the People in greater ways. Besides, I did not bring my first child until I was over forty. You two both have time. And you two both can have seats.” Deshanna motions to two armchairs placed before her desk. Lavellan is grateful to be off her feet. The cushioning feels brand new on the chairs, and she watches Solas next to her sink down in his seat, crossing his legs. At once, he is on guard and relaxed. Deshanna pours the tea into the cup on her desk. “There are cups on the tray atop the chest if you want tea. I have enough for the three of us.”

Lavellan glances towards a four-legged chest of drawers that rests against the wall. The teacups atop its upper slab of wood are glass painted with Dalish motifs. “What sort of tea do you have?” Lavellan asks absently. Her eyes fall on the kettle and its companions atop Deshanna’s desk. On the tray beside the teapot sit a number of tiny vials either empty or full of odd-colored liquid. They are labelled with things like ‘morning,’ ‘noontime,’ or ‘evening.’

“Mallow and elfroot for my health, nutmeg, cinnamon, apple, and blackcurrant for my palate.”

“So it’s herbal. I’ll pass.” Lavellan thinks that teas that do not give energy are useless: why drink it if not to stay awake? When she sees Deshanna staring at her pointedly, the Inquisitor quickly adds, “Thank you for the offer, hahren.”

“You are very welcome, da’len.” Pleased with the added pleasantry, she moves on to Solas. “And you, lethallin?”

Lavellan is quick to answer for her companion. “Oh, no. Solas doesn’t like tea.”

“I actually will have a cup, if it is no inconvenience. Do you have crème and sugar, lethallan?” Has Solas said this just to spite her? They have been getting along well but he is still as smug as ever and has been cranky. What a strange way to describe an ancient being and pseudo-deity, Lavellan takes a moment to realize. Solas peers over to see Lavellan glaring at him. His frown deepens. “What? I only categorically dislike true teas. I will drink herbals so long as they are not bitter to the taste.”

Deshanna seems amused by the interplay. “No sugar or crème, but I do have honey right here by my medicines.”

“Honey will more than suffice,” Solas says. A cup and a saucer settle into one of his hands by magic. The Keeper raises an eyebrow at the ease which Solas has summoned the glass. From what Lavellan knows of magic, energizing a teacup to summon it is some respects more difficult than tossing boulders. Maneuvering small items with precision requires exceptional control of both mana and the Veil. Even the energized holds of experienced mages are wont to break fragile things, like glass or the hollow bones of a couple hundred jackdaws, with small fluctuations in focus. Calmly he says, “Thank you, Keeper. I appreciate your hospitality.”

“You are welcome to it.”

Lavellan relaxes somewhat as she watches Solas prepare his drink. He mixes perhaps too much of the honey in with the soft ruby liquid. Lavellan’s bearing plays somewhere between exasperation and appreciation: “You still have a sweet tooth.”

“I have not indulged much recently,” the mage admits, and a small smile eases onto his face and _stays there_ for the first time in the morning. Lavellan is relieved to see it.

Deshanna watches the two for a long moment before she clears her throat into her little napkin. She tucks the cloth into her sleeve and speaks. “I presume you are here on the business of the missing Seeker,” the Keeper ventures. “You have brought with you an arcane consultant…malificars are involved, then?”

“No?” Lavellan shakes her head in confusion. “I haven’t heard anything about a missing Seeker. I don’t really get read in on much of the Order’s doings.”

“Yesterday your friend Kelleth mentioned a ‘templar woman’ asking questions of the elves, I believe.” Solas leans back into his chair with his cup and saucer and takes a sip. “That is pleasant,” he says to himself.

“Yes, the Lord Seeker herself recently came calling to investigate the disappearance of another of her Order,” Deshanna says.

Lavellan perks up slightly. “Cassandra was here?” The Inquisitor has not seen her old friend in some months. Rebuilding the Seekers has proven a slow and tumultuous process—the destruction of the Templar Order had left the sect without a wide pool of recruits and without a significant part of its historical purpose. The reimagined Seeker Order is stretched thin straddling an odd line between handling internal Chantry affairs and using the powers of its members to hunt criminal mages.

“If so, I am somewhat sorry I missed seeing her,” Solas says, “but perhaps it is for the best that we did not cross paths.” He glances down into his too-sweet tea, his eyes heavy-lidded. Despite their deep differences, the traditionalist Seeker and the free-thinking mage had genuinely admired one another. Never mind Lavellan’s own broken heart—Solas’s betrayal of the Inquisition had left Cassandra shattered. Stalwart, dutiful, determined, but shattered all the same. Solas glances to the window and lifts his cup to his lips. A lash of vindictive and righteous anger for Cassandra and for herself flares within Lavellan and she hopes, despite his assurances, that Solas feels shame.

Lavellan swallows down her vehement swell of rage. Solas drives her past sanity and stability and she will not linger on feelings he has evoked. “If she came to investigate in person, Cassandra must be very concerned.” Cassandra is not one to hang back while others fight at the front lines, but like Lavellan she has many administrative and political duties. Though she is not sickly like the Inquisitor, the Lord Seeker has aged as well and nears fifty. Lavellan adds, “She’s a good friend. I—we—know her well.”

“The Lord Seeker mentioned as much when we spoke. She did not seem like a liar and I had heard of her past affiliations, but I have come to be suspicious of such claims. When titled humans come from beyond Wycome’s walls, they always claim some camaraderie with you.”

“Unsurprising. What do you know about the situation?”

“In the spring, a Seeker who went by Jarvinia came to Wycome. Much ado was made about her arrival, but her work here was…quiet. I assumed it was a Chantry matter. At the end of the last month, a lay sister who was Seeker Jarvinia’s neighbor at the rectory house reported that she had gone missing. Mother Mariska entreated the Council to order the City Guard to mount a concerted search of Wycome and its surroundings, but nothing came of it and the Seeker Order was notified of the disappearance—“ Deshanna takes a break to cough, pulling her kerchief from her sleeve. Her back and shoulders heave as she catches her breath, gasping hoarsely. She tucks her napkin back into its place and takes up her cup to swallow down the tea. “My apologies, my apologies…The Lord Seeker came calling some weeks ago. She did not have many questions for me, but I answered what she asked the best I could.

“She asked me if I had ever spoken to Seeker Jarvinia and if I had been involved in her work. I said no. She asked me if any complaints about or threats towards the missing woman had reached my ears. I told her no. She asked me if I knew of dangerous activity amongst the People. I told her to speak with the city gaoler for those who had broken the law of Wycome, and to seek out exiles for those the Dalish deemed a threat to our peace. She asked me if I knew the city’s underworld, in which dens criminals and smugglers met—I told her honest members of the Council tend only to learn of such things when their proprietors were bought before the law, but offered her interviews with those in our Clan who might.”

“Hm.” Solas hums quizzically. When he realizes that he has drawn the attentions of the Inquisitor and the Keeper he explains, “I am surprised at your willingness to comply with the Seeker’s investigation. One would think that your duty to protect the Clan would prevent you from exposing even your scoundrels to the Chantry’s scrutiny.” There is a sardonic note to his question.

“Hmph. It was not a popular decision amongst the Clans at first, but I believe it was the right choice. Because I did not seek to impede the Lord Seeker, she permitted Keepers of the other Clans and me to supervise the interviews. She allowed me enough information to keep our People informed of her activities at the Campgrounds and at other Dalish enclaves. Predictability and Elvish oversight stilled some fear.” Deshanna takes a long drink of her tea. “I have a duty to Clan and my People as a whole. The halla have lead us here and here we will stay until they leave. I know the History of the Kingdom of the Dales and the price of noncompliance for noncompliance’s sake. Besides,” the old woman adds almost flippantly, “I have made an oath to Wycome as well. If there are murderers or malificars or slavers operating from the city, they endanger us all.”

“What information did you gather about Cassandra’s investigation?” Lavellan asks. “You said something about slavers?”

“Following after Jarvinia, the Lord Seeker found her way to the city’s dark markets. She disclosed some of what she discovered there to the Council and the Guard—the most upsetting of which was a slaver ring. There is a large itinerant Dalish population here that slavers have learned to prey upon. It had gone unnoticed because elves that live amongst the Clans of Wycome are not targeted—instead, the victims are wandering youths far from their Clans passing through on pilgrimage in search of adventure. These slavers, often elves themselves, will offer odd jobs and paid expeditions to lure young men and women into traps so they might be sold to Tevinter. The same rings have been using other tactics to capture impoverished shemlen and city elves living in anonymity as well…the Council and Guard must begin to discuss intervention soon. We are spread so thin with festivities, of all things…” Deshanna laments. A flicker of exhaustion passes over her face. “Hopefully we will stamp out the worst of them before the Synod. From what I understand, the matter of the slavers was not related to the missing Seeker. Your friend Cassandra was not exactly...forthcoming.”

“Such secrecy is the nature of the Seeker Order. It would likely be very difficult to uncover their goings on,” Solas says absentmindedly. Lavellan wonders if he is admitting to a blind spot in his spy operations. He takes a drink of tea and continues, “If we solve our current problem, however, I may be interested in keeping abreast of the issue with the slavers. Our current problem, is, after all, a pressing one.” The last sentence comes sharply.

Lavellan rolls her eyes though she supposes Solas is justified in his impatience. “That does reminds me. About our problem,” Lavellan says. “Keeper—

“—I apologize for my digression. I have been here a decade and I still marvel at the needs of a city. The elves of the Dalish Kingdom and those of Great Arlathan managed these things, and so shall I. What business brings the two of you to Wycome, and to my office?”

Lavellan uses her good hand to produce the book Hellathen had given her the previous day from one of her deep coat pockets and offers it to Deshanna. “Firstly, I have your office budget ledger. Hellathen accidentally brought it back to the Campgrounds with her the other day. Secondly, Solas and I are here to investigate a multiple murder of Inquisition agents and affiliates. Right now, we’re fairly certain the killing is connected to a ruin in one the maps in the archive. The Inquisition came upon the site by accident and removed a single artifact to study. Anyone familiar with the ruin might have information as to why someone might be willing to kill for that artifact.”

“You are looking for the names suspects, then. No need to sweeten the medicine for me, da’len.” Lavellan feels a small stab of guilt at being the second person in a month to demand Deshanna turn over Dalish elves to the Chantry. “When my First comes to work here, she often carries the records we keep at the Campground with her in case they are of use… I am surprised we have not made this mistake before.” The grey-haired elf slowly stands and walks to the bookshelf and she slowly counts along a row of identical black spines. Deshanna slides out one or two of the volumes and checks their contents before returning them to their places. Finally she selects a book and turns away from her stock. “Here is what you are searching for.”

Lavellan thinks to stand to walk to her and take the book, but her attempt to pull herself to her feet is met with pain. Her kneecaps feel like pincushions, punctured by a dozen needles. The hip she had favored sliding down the roof of Clattering Keep the previous day is unbearably sore. Noticing Lavellan’s stillness, Solas places his teacup on a coaster, deposits it on Deshanna’s desk, stands up and nears her to take the book. “Thank you, Keeper.” On his feet still, he begins paging through the black tome. “We will likely need pen and paper to copy things down...”

Lavellan is ready to say no, but instinctively feels in her jacket for pen and paper. In a pocket just above her coin purse, opposite Solas’s old paintbrushes, she feels the thin bulge of a pocketbook. She produces a leatherbound pad and a fountain pen from the pouch. “I actually have it on me,” she says, holding the items up before rather unceremoniously dropping the book into her lap. She unscrews the cap of the pen by holding it in her mouth and twisting the instrument’s body. Lavellan shoves the butt of the pen into the cap and holds the whole implement in her mouth as she uses her real hand to open the note pad. She flips past meeting notes to an empty page, where she braces the book against her leg with her prosthetic. Finally the Inquisitor adjusts the opposable fingers on her fake limb to hold the pages down flat before removing the pen from her mouth with her good hand.

Lavellan is very aware of Solas watching the entire ordeal. He offers, “I could write if you would like to read me out the list.”

“After I went through so much effort?” Lavellan jokes. She does not want to seem incompetent to Solas. He had already taken to helping her undress and dress, and had watched her wobble on the stairs on the way to the office. Last night the both of them had been wearing thin, but Solas has fully recuperated from fulfilling his bargain with the Antiquarian. Lavellan feels worse than she has in some time. “What was the number on the map? H117?”

“I believe so.”

Deshanna, who had stayed close to the bookshelf and returned her attentions to her collection after handing off the log, very quickly turns back to Solas and Lavellan. Her brows are raised and she seems rigid. “H117. A ruin from the Elvish Empire.” She had known the map immediately—strange.

The Inquisitor and Solas share a quick glance. “You’re familiar with the ruin?” Lavellan asks.

“Not the ruin itself, only the map. It is…rare to find a document that purports to lead to sites so ancient. And it is rarer still to have such a map that does not end deep in Tevinter territory.” She adds, “As such the map you ask after is memorable.”

“And the parties that asked after it?” Solas asks as he pages through the log while ambling to rejoin Lavellan. He does not retake his seat, instead standing between the Inquisitor’s chair and the window. He frowns, his eyes not breaking from his perusal. “Were they memorable as well?”

“No one stands out, no,” Deshanna says. She slides the ledger in her hand into the place vacated by the log.

Lavellan knows her Keeper well enough to see that something is wrong. She continues with her line of questioning anyways, hoping to reveal the source of the tension. “Do you have any other maps you think lead to the same ruin?”

“Not that I am aware of, and I know all the maps we maintain.” Solas pages through the book quietly while Deshanna speaks. A number of papers have been shoved into the book to make extra space in the logs of popular maps. “H117 is unique—I had long believed that it was likely an article of fantasy. As far as I am aware, no one has ever found it…though perhaps they just chose not to report the discoveries back to me. You say your people came upon it by accident. It is odd how these things work.”

Solas tilts the book down towards where Lavellan sits, holding it open at arm’s length near his waist so she can see. The records are written in the neat and tiny handwriting of Deshanna and Hellathen and are comprised by a table of the names of people who had asked to copy the map and the dates on which they had visited. Each entry comes with a small mission statement of the borrowers. Many of them wish to honor the Secret-Keeper. As she reads down the list, the tiny words begin to blur. Lavellan blinks and finds her eyelids are heavy. Perhaps she should have asked around to find black tea before she left the Campgrouds. “Well,” Lavellan grumbles, “I don’t see any familiar names, apart from ‘Dirthamen.’ Do you?”

“No. I think we should set to taking down everything—including what details have been given. All of these people are leads and we possess the resources to follow them.”

Lavellan sours remembering how extensive Solas’s spy network is. She channels the distaste into sarcasm over a different manner: “Thank goodness Dalish Clans are notoriously easy to find. Go on, I’m ready.”

“Athevi of Clan Vahanimil: to Regain What We Have Lost. Erato and Gaiane of Clan Ansylai, Venture Forth for Glory with Six City Elves of Denerim: Pal Teav, Vioriel Cairbre, Lyam Ghilason, Olin Bloore, Mattiam Tillvis, Shon Westwall. Xixellore Tirana: Formerly an Enchanter of the Circle at Montissimard and New Follower of the Old Ways Seeks to Honor Dirthamen. An Expedition of Clan Sarantsatsral: Lead by Second Esenath…” Solas goes on, reading the names and missions listed. A few bouts of coughing from Deshanna cause him to pause and offer her pleasantries in Elvish before continuing again. Lavellan takes special notes of those who call themselves hahrens or claim to have performed special research—she decides they must know more than youthful adventurers chasing clout.

A few times Lavellan must stop to ask for spellings. Her hand begins to cramp and she thinks to the magical facsimile press that had been in the map room, and back to Solas’s offer to write. Though she read, Lavellan had never had a record keeping job amongst the Clan and had hardly ever written before becoming the Inquisitor. She had never had good handwriting with her dominant hand, the left, but six years of constant practice has done little to train the right. She feels embarrassed that her words begin to take up an increasing amount of space on the pages. “And, most recently, three months ago, Tas’Eryan of Clan Yasrin: to Gather Brave Elves and Journey Forth to the Mountains Next Year. It seems your cousin’s betrothed had an interest in our ruin. But that is not all. I skipped over one—because it is more interesting than the others.”

“Why—? What, you didn’t trust me to take the details for the rest down after I heard it?” Solas doesn’t answer and instead glances over to the window, where a branch boasting a bright shock of yellowing leaves scratches at the glass pane. After a moment of silence Lavellan presses, “Admit it.”

“Not legibly, no,” Solas confesses. Jackass. He takes in her seething glare before he rather flatly continues, “Four years ago the archive was visited by a religious sect calling themselves Dirth Irasseth—where Secrets Are Held Safe. They describe themselves as devoted to Dirthamen in this map’s log. It says here that their mission is to stand guard over the treasures of their patron in the face of treachery and betrayal.”

Four years ago was when the Antiquarian claimed the cultist Yhdris had asked about an item resembling the Conflux. Worshippers of the same of the Evanuris asking after the map at the time is too incredible to be a coincidence. “Read the names,” Lavellan demands.

“Shalindir. Bellassan. Utharain. Marathiel. Rinadahl.” After checking that Deshanna is still facing the bookshelf, Solas flips the log closed and slips it onto the windowsill beside him discretely. Solas makes quick eye contact with Lavellan and raises his brows. She returns the expression to let him know what he is doing. It is an extremely petty maneuver for a God of Deception: Solas is trying to leave the logbook behind at the office deliberately. Lavellan’s is more than supportive of the plan. She does not particularly want to return to the Campgrounds to give it back to her cousin. “No Clan names are listed, but it is possible they forfeited their familial allegiances as a sign of dedication to Dirthamen.”

The ink in the pen is of a sort that dries quickly, but Lavellan keeps the notebook open so as not to smudge her sloppy words. She looks at the preceding pages that she had closed to ensure that she has not sabotaged her own notes and breathes a sigh of relief. Deshanna begins to speak, looking to the bookshelves and not her guests. “Adahlen-da’len…You watch over your Inquisition like a Keeper watches over her Clan.” She turns to look upon Lavellan in time for the Inquisitor to see a wistful and conflicted pride dying in her Keeper’s eyes with her next question. “You say you lost men? How many were taken?”

“Ten. Two Inquisition, and eight allies under our protection. Others were injured.”

Deshanna hums. “I see. Did this happen in a skirmish to take the ruin?” She sounds like she is forcing herself to ask this and Lavellan takes a moment to realize her Keeper is accusing her organization of violently forcing its way past elves to plunder their temple. Something about that hurts. Many others in the Clan had never liked Lavellan, never expected much of her—fuck what those people thought of her. They were mostly elders who had never hunted or fought or worked alongside her who judged her sharply as they sat at their looms. So long as they had kept making her clothing and mending her tents, she never cared what they thought. The Inquisitor had worked for the respect of her comrades in arms and especially the respect of her Keeper, and even now she wants Deshanna to regard her well.

Lavellan takes a long moment to formulate her response and then replies sharply, “No. The victims were scholars and servants: all non-combatants. The attacks were planned and targeted. Their murders were in cold blood.” She pauses to gauge Deshanna’s response. The old woman seems sad and frustrated. She is more worldly than most of the Dalish but prioritizes the People and her gaze makes Lavellan feel like a monster. The Inquisitor adds, “There was no resistance or even activity at the temple. The victims were stalked and ambushed. Yes, the artifact belongs to the Dalish and the Inquisition seized it but unless my men are lying to me, no Elvish blood was shed to enter that temple. Some in Clan Lavellan may question where my loyalties lie but you know I would never authorize, allow, or sanction—“

“—I know. I know,” Deshanna rasps. The older woman clears her throat, swallowing down a cough with a gag as she continues, “You know as well as anyone that your Chantry has earned its distrust from our People. What right, one might argue, does the Chantry have to complain of the lives of ten people while elves still suffer the ramifications of a centuries-past Exalted March that took everything they had fought to rebuild? Must elves suffer the indignity of yet another theft from them while lying down, and only later beg their oppressor for restitution?”

“What are you saying, hahren?” Lavellan asks. The Inquisitor feels like they are both stabbing daggers at one another blindfolded and afraid of what she might find, she is no longer eager to interpret the Keeper’s full intent for herself.

“I am saying I sympathize with these people, whoever they are. That does not change the fact that they are murderers. Murderers who have robbed families of sons and daughters over a mere object. These deaths serve no purpose if they seek to once more make the People whole and proud. This is the difference between the vengeance of Elgar’nan and the justice of Mythal. The former is righteous and sweet-tasting, the latter is wise but at times unimaginably bitter. These elves have done wrong, and I respect your duty to the Inquisition, da’len, but keep in mind that the ones you seek are likely not monsters.”

Silence falls and Deshanna’s face contorts in pain and discomfort. Lavellan fears that what she looks upon is utter disappointment: though the Keeper’s words are understanding she is hurt. Lavellan had not expected Deshanna to respond like this and perhaps feels disappointment herself. Maybe the Inquisitor has betrayed her own People. She opens her mouth to defend herself without knowing what is prudent or valuable to say, but is cut off before she can spit out anything brash and foolish.

“Keeper,” Solas intercedes, “it may be worth considering for you that this stolen artifact is dangerous. Its magics are unstable and if it has not already killed its custodians, it certainly will very soon.” Amidst the two women’s wavering, his voice is direct and evenly metered. He locks eyes with the Keeper when she turns her attention to him and in his stare is a mortifying mixture of blistering impatience and chilling indifference. “I will let you know: by your silence, you endanger the persons or persons you wish to protect. It would be wise of you to tell us the whole truth.”

“—Solas.” Lavellan remembers his soft and quiet warning to the Viddasala. She remembers the sad sigh and single blink that had taken the Qunari’s life. She has no doubt that Solas is willing to hurt anyone necessary, but Lavellan runs through reasons in her head that he might kill Deshanna in terror of any of them coming true.

Solas’s grey eyes flicker towards the Inquisitor and bring his attention. As if the Keeper is no longer before the two of them he addresses Lavellan. Solas seems to apologize, but his words of contrition come more like a sharp reprimand: “My apologies, Inquisitor, for being brusque. Though there was little we could do to avoid it and I have exercised patience and caution, we have already wasted a significant amount of time. Considering what is at stake I do not intend to waste more here.” He pauses to turn his gaze upon Deshanna, still speaking like she is unable to hear. “This woman withholds information from us deliberately. That is almost certainly the cause of her recalcitrance and pain. She is failing to justify her dishonesty and sits ill at ease.”

Deshanna seems bemused, her wrinkled face staring impassively forward with the corners of its lips turned up. Her agate eyes roll slowly from Solas to Lavellan. “And I had thought your friend to be so polite before, da’len. You might want to warn him he should watch his tone when speaking to his elders,” Deshanna tells Lavellan. The Keeper stops to bark out a number of miserable coughs into her kerchief and when the spell ends she seems disoriented and unfocused. The Inquisitor tries to summon words of warning but everything that comes to her mind sounds insane or like she’s advancing a vague and ominous threat.

Lavellan sits forward in her seat and her back aches and her joints scream. She places her good hand on Solas’s wrist and squeezes it tight as if her touch might stop anything. She only says, “You didn’t contest his accusation.”

“I didn’t, that’s correct,” Deshanna says. She is quiet for an unbearably long time and she travels forth to her desk to take a long sip of her tea. “My apologies. I’ve been called to deliberate on a decision: shall I betray your trust, or or shall I betray the trust of an old friend?” The Keeper laughs and swallows a cough, her eyes falling upon Solas’s wrist where Lavellan clasps to him. “By the Grace of the Creators, the two of you make yourselves hard to deny.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long. i’ve been changing and re-ordering things, and also recently moved across the country.


	13. The Coward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Keeper offers Lavellan and Solas information about the mysterious cultist Yhdris.
> 
> Before they are able to move on from Wycome, tensions erupt between the estranged lovers and Lavellan finds the fate of an old friend thrust into her hand.

Solas watches the Keeper like a condor mounting its final watch over a slow and staggering ram with its head lowered and its knees buckling. He advances an impatient assessment to the grey-haired woman sitting behind the big and cluttered desk: “So then you will be telling us the truth, and the whole truth?”

“And by the Creators, nothing but the truth.” Deshanna confirms as she lowers herself down into her seat slowly. “I have…already failed my old friend. It is best not to fail a child of the Clan I keep as well.” As she settles into the leather-backed chair, the Keeper eyes the place where Lavellan tightly grips Solas’s wrist. The skin over Lavellan’s knuckles is taught and pulled pale through its dark tone as she holds steady onto him. “There is an itch in my throat and I will pour another cup of tea before I begin. Would you like some more?” she asks him through softened narrowed eyes. Lavellan cannot tell if Deshanna is attempting to taunt him or offer peace. Her voice is wary but does not waver.

Solas does not respond to her offer. “It is good that you have chosen to comply. Speak,” he demands, “now that it pleases you to do so.”

When the Keeper’s eyes fall down to pour the cup, Lavellan feels Solas’s free hand atop her own where she has attached herself. She expects him to brush her off but instead with curled fingers he pets her. His fingertips delicately meander around the contours of her knuckles and his thumb nuzzles against its counterpart. Solas does not look to Lavellan to give her any other cue but from its simultaneous firmness and gentility she feels that he intends his small carousal over her skin to be reassuring. Lavellan suddenly feels a disgust wracking her body.

Her gut dips like a ship at sea with its bow casting downwards into the gap beyond the crest of the swell and rising again in the ceaseless tumult. Solas had swatted her hand away sharply in the hall and been so tender and sweet to her in the aftermath. He had been so pitifully tense the prior day that Lavellan had taken him to bed to placate his nerves and to assuage his misery.

But now Solas finds himself in an immediate situation where he is the one in control: he is getting what he wants of the Keeper and is able and very likely willing to hurt her if she does not satisfy him. Solas once more becomes a quiet monster, morose but steady in his terrible ways. It takes all the Inquisitor’s strength to not pull herself from his grasp abruptly. Instead, she loosens her hold and slowly moves it back after one last squeeze of faked affection. Lavellan promised not to beg of him. She has not yet broken her word but she feels pitiful and used.

Deshanna rests the cup of tea she has risen to her lips down on the saucer with a small clinking noise. “For some time, I wandered away from the Clans to see the Creators’ world. During my journeys, I took on strange jobs to feed myself and put coin in my pocket. Three decades ago in Orlais, I answered an ad on a Chanter’s Board to act as guidance and security to a Senior Enchanter who had been permitted leave from the Circle at Montissimard. He would perform experiments on the Blight-ridden soil of various wasted regions in the Western Expanse.” Deshanna clears her throat and takes a long drink of the tea.

“Our party of fifteen started the expedition amply stocked and well-prepared, but once we were far in the desert a number of accidents befell us. Men were injured. Precious supplies were lost. We decided we must abandon the remainder of our mission so we might live. Retreating did not bring us better luck and we encountered one setback after another. The Enchanter, his students, and I did not have enough mana or lyrium to treat wounds our men had sustained, and we began to run dangerously low on rations. Some of the Andrasteans among us began whispering that the expedition was cursed—that by aspiring to pry into the nature of the Blight, we emulated the hubris of the magisters who tried to breach the Golden City and thus were being punished.” Solas hums darkly at this element of Deshanna’s story. His eyes are cast down and he seems distant momentarily, and Lavellan joins his lapse to recall the heroine of the story her cousin had told in front of the bonfire and the dark, forgotten figures packed high in an ephemeral court: they had explored too deeply, asked for too many answers.

The Keeper goes on, “We came across a small oasis in the desert. We had passed by the little pond on our way out. The Enchanter suggested we rest there by its little pool to regain our strength. Many in the party were unhappy with the idea at first: many of us felt there had been something sinister about the oasis, as if we were being watched. If we rested, we might squander our dwindling supplies with idleness or worse, we might be attacked. If we did not rest, we risked death.”

“We had not seen any creature for several days when we arrived—not even desert phoenix or lurkers. At the oasis we were able to drink water, catch birds, and dig grubs and grass-roots from the sparse muddy ground…We knew our situation going forward would be dire. During the day, we watched the shifting sands and expected at any moment to be set upon in an ambush. Between the winds, the mirages, and our own frenzied imaginations, vigilance turned towards misery.

“I remember that evening well. The sky was the most lovely purple, with the horizons holding the dark blue of ravens’ down. Slowly over a swell, ten figures in cloaks the color of sand and mirage arose in the liminal hour and ghosted towards us. When they came to the perimeter of our camp, the leader turned first to me: before they even spoke I knew they were Dalish. From behind his bird mask, he asked our business in the Wastes. The exchange was tense, but I spoke for the party and described our research mission—and the direness of our situation. After convening in retreat, the elves invited us to their home, Dirth Irassethan: the Place Where Secrets Are Kept Safe.

“Many of the party did not think we should trust them, but what choice did we have?” Deshanna asks, swallowing down a cough. “Many of us limping, we followed them over the dunes in the darkening evening until we reached a sheer drop. Down a steep carved pathway in the cliffside, another oasis laid. In it the elves had cultivated and farmed terraces, and erected homes and hutches for livestock. Stone dwellings were carved out of the walls of the cliff and yurts rest at its base. Our guides told us that this was the home of Dirth Irasseth, a monastic community of near a hundred elves who worshipped Dirthamen through isolated and quiet study. They lived in an old Second Kingdom ruin, which itself was protected by magic from the ancient days of Elvhenan. Perhaps an hour after our arrival at the small village, the leader of Dirth Irasseth asked for an audience with me and the Enchanter.”

“When we came before him in his temple inside the cliff face, Hahren Thaiarith explained that a lone scout had seen me, a Dalish woman, in the party and wished to help one of the People. The scout, an idealistic young man, had implored the leadership of the Clan to at least proffer us supplies so we would not die in the Wastes. The members of their community that were sent for further assessment had so admired the Enchanter’s desire to study the Blight that they became willing to aide even the humans amongst us. Their worship of Dirthamen was done through quiet study and contemplation, and they had great respect for our mission.”

“Honorable means to pursue fraught ends, I see,” Solas says. Much less pensively, he continues, “My apologies for rushing your tale, Keeper, but we would like to learn about the map sooner rather than later. I will ask directly: We seek a man named Yhdris. Do you know of him?”

Deshanna gives a pained and coughing laugh, her eyes sinking to her desk. She shakes her head slowly, working out her regretful mirth. “I had hoped otherwise, but it is Yhdris you seek after all. How did you come upon his name, if I may ask?”

The Inquisitor explains to Deshanna, “We learned that a worshipper of Dirthamen by that name sought out an artifact similar to the one stolen from the Inquisition. We have so few leads that this is one we _must_ pursue.” That feels embarrassing to admit. “You need to tell us about him.”

The Keeper does not scold her for her manners. “Yhdris was the name of the scout who first thought to offer us harbor at Dirth Irassethan—without his request we may have never been approached and aided. While we rested, I came to know him as well as I could in the short time we had. He was a boy of fifteen who had not yet earned his vallaslin, but had left his Clan with traveling acolytes to join the sect. His faith was strong, his mind was sharp, and his heart was kind. He had a talent with magic, and between his chores and devotionals he would often come speak to me asking me of my adventures. He was torn, he told me, between giving himself fully to monastic study and honoring Dirthamen by traveling the world in search of hidden knowledge to bring back to the secluded monastery. Like you once did, da’len, he dreamed of a bigger world.

“We stayed for over a week recouping our strength and healing our wounds, and when we left the sect offered us provisions from their stores. I thought I would not get the chance to repay Yhdris or Dirth Irasseth for their kindness. However, Yhdris and I happened upon one another many times over. We met somewhat over a year later at a port town, where he first told me of his mission to collect and study artifacts for Dirthamen’s glory. After I joined Clan Lavellan, I would see the young man at Arlathvhens, always chasing rumors of ancient things to bring back to his desert monastery. For a night several years ago, he took quarter with Clan Lavellan when he chanced to pass near us on his travels.”

Lavellan is surprised. Had she met the man? “What? When?”

“You were perhaps thirteen or fourteen? He kept to himself and would not have been a memorable guest,” Deshanna says. “After that, I did not hear from him for many years.”

“Four years ago Yhdris, now a man of forty, reappeared here in Wycome. When he appeared in my office in the Campgrounds, I was surprised to see him: he had given his name as ‘Jae’ or something of the sort to our guards. He said he had found a memory in an artifact that told him of a temple of Dirthamen hidden away in the Hundred Pillars, and that he had heard that the elves of Wycome archived maps. He wished to locate the temple in his memory, and we went to search through the maps for a place like the one he was—“ she stops to cough, “—was looking for. My apologies. We found the map you asked after, and I provided him with a facsimile. He then told me it was vital that I never let anyone know he had visited or where he planned to go.”

“The promise you spoke of,” Solas recognizes. Almost irritably he asks, “What purpose did this secrecy serve?”

“He claimed members of Dirth Irasseth wanted him dead. Over the past few years, Dirth Irasseth had more than doubled in number and had begun to develop factions—including some who wished to abandon peaceful study and reclaim Elvish artifacts and knowledge by force. The kind hahren I had met passed away and the new leader espoused violent dogma and was quick to cry heresy at those who opposed her. When Yhdris spoke out against her, she began to move against him and he and his closest associates were forced to flee Dirth Irassethan. He told me he sought the temple because he believed that the splendor of the treasure inside might reunite Dirth Irasseth and reform the order to its noble purpose. The new hahren considered him a threat to her power and would stop at nothing to find him and kill him, or so he said.” Deshanna lets a long pause settle. “Yhdris had saved my life and the lives of others, and I believed him to be a good and true man. I vowed to him that I would never reveal that he had visited me, or that he travelled forth to a temple. I made no record of his visit.”

“So did the new hahren’s loyalists ever come after him?” Lavellan asks.

“Oh, yes. Less than a week later,” she said. “They asked after Yhdris. They informed me that he had become possessed, attacked the order, and before he used blood magic to flee he announced his plans to return with an artifact of great power so that he might finish his business of destroying Dirth Irasseth. I did not believe the story. Yhdris had not been possessed: a Keeper must know an abomination when she sees one.” Deshanna says. “I told them that while he may have passed through Wycome, he had not risked visiting his old friend.”

Lavellan is confused. “Yet the logbook says that you gave them the map to the place he was headed?”

“Hellathen did,” Deshanna sighs. “One of their number approached her while I spoke with the rest. They…they must have known what he was looking for already, or sought the ruin on their own accord. Perhaps they were impatient. Perhaps they expected me to protect Yhdris. What a poor job of that I have done! Before you inquire—I do not know where Yhdris is now, nor have I heard of Dirth Irasseth since.”

“Thank you for telling us about this,” Lavellan says. She admits almost sheepishly, “I appreciate you chose to give me the truth.”

“I am your Keeper. It is my duty to honor the trust of my clan—this promise should supersede others I make.” She notices Lavellan bracing herself as she stands to get out of her chair. The Inquisitor’s back hurts and she anticipates that her feet and knees will rack in pain once she hoists herself creakingly onto them. Deshanna asks, “You will be back for the Synod then?”

“Hopefully. If all goes well, Wycome has much to gain.” Lavellan pauses, biting her lip to swallow a groan of discomfort. She feels off-balance and her body aches. “I was at the Campgrounds yesterday evening.”

“You may have mentioned,” Deshanna says, waiting to hear what Lavellan says next.

“Some members of the Clan have taken to… _unfortunate_ fantasies about what the near future holds for Wycome,” Lavellan says as she stretches gingerly. “They seem to think that the halla leading more and more Clans here is a sign, and that the city is a few years and a couple Clans away from solely Elvish rule.”

“I am well-aware of these beliefs among the Clans.” Deshanna coughs into her kerchief as she shakes her head slowly. “One of the Clans that has settled here with us, Clan Yasrin, has been an especial cause of concern. Our People are smart enough not to speak of such things near humans, but our own grow worried that our future here is jeopardized by calls to action. The two Councilors who represent the elves of the old alienage and a number of the Dalish have suggested I prepare to censure or expel the worst of the rabble-rousers.”

“Perhaps it would be best to do so soon. Some believe they will be able to dispossess the humans of their land here. Others believe that they will be able to assert their dominion and the humans here will accept their rule,” Solas says. “I am not sure which line of thought is more misguided.”

Lavellan clenches her good fist. “They’re delusional,” she grimaces.

Deshanna doesn’t answer. “Do you remember what you told me the night before you were to be given the vallaslin that you had earned?”

She feels Solas watching her as she answers, “Yes. I told you that even though I earned it, I didn’t want it. I had done what I was supposed to, but I didn’t feel like I was supposed to. I thought a real elf, a real Dalish woman, should be happy or satisfied. All I felt was terror that this would be my life.” She tries not to look at her companion. “You told me that my discontent and my fear were deeply and authentically Elvish.”

Deshanna nods. “The People did not come of this world to be wanderers and slum-dwellers. The others now see what was always evident to you, what I over my life had learned, and they grow angry and confused. These are growing pains: right now they do not have an outlet for their ambition other than fantasies of conquest. Most who entertain the ideas know they are nothing more than dreams of a future far easier to imagine than what likely is in store.”

“I think you’re being too kind,” Lavellan says. She had earned admiration given from the Inquisition by making a show of listening, by understanding what her followers wanted and what they would need from her so that they would remain by her side. She has little of the same patience for the Clan she had grown up with—she knows their line so well she is sick of it. “Most dream of nothing more than glory and revenge. So what if their claim is valid and their anger is earned? A justified suicide is still a suicide. We can’t allow this to gain traction.”

“It does not need to gain much traction to be dangerous. Action taken by a small group of the impassioned could breed enough ill will and mistrust among our human friends to endanger us all, even if we denounce them,” Deshanna says. “One day I too dream that there will be an Elvish state, a place where we may exalt our faith and celebrate our culture. But I know that Wycome will not be that place, at least not in this age or the next. We have endeared ourselves to this city through sacrifice, but the same cannot be said of the rest of the world. Our alliance with the humans of Wycome protects us.”

“And what a tenuous safety that is, to be so dependent on the mercy of others,” Solas says. “It is a frustrating and even humiliating position to find oneself in. I can empathize.”

It takes Lavellan a long moment to find the source of empathy in Solas. “It was dangerous for you when you first joined with the Inquisition.” She remembers the wary bearing of the quiet man, as placid and impenetrable as the frozen lake. Despite his soft-spoken manner, many of the working folk of Haven had feared the kindly elf who wandered in their midst: magic was dangerous and this mage in particular was beyond strange. The few other mages in those early days hung close to Cullen or Cassandra or some other Chantry-loyal templar and eventually to Vivienne, making show of their safeness, fealty, and willingness to submit to the Circle. Solas had been an avowed apostate, a man who had come from nowhere bearing odd knowledge and suspicious perspective. Had anything gone tremendously wrong, he could have been killed. He could have been made Tranquil. She realizes it is a bitter accusation after it passes her lips: “I thought you were very brave.”

A smile that is once both gentle and cruel plays at the corner of Solas’s lips. His grey eyes grow distant before settling over Lavellan and a grim humor dances in his voice: “I had no reason to fear. Early on the Herald of Andraste swore herself as my protector.” Lavellan had been a fool then and is still a fool now. He has been difficult all morning but this is a strike directly at her. She does not look away from him and in his eyes she sees an invitation to wrathful violence. She might jump upon him and claw out his throat and he waits there for her to do it.

The two are drawn out of their hatefully desirous stare as Deshanna coughs heavily. “For now, Wycome has offered elves—and not just the Dalish—a safe harbor to rediscover sovereignty and society. I will not let it vanish. Elves must not just coexist upon the continent with humans, dwarves, and the giants who have abandoned the Qun. We must learn to thrive.”

“You have very noble ends, Keeper,” Solas commends her. In his odd and obscure way he seems charmed or amused. Lavellan grits her teeth as the mage politely wishes, “I genuinely hope your peace will last.”

* * *

 

Solas and Lavellan stand in the back of the empty chapel of the Councillors’ Wing, close to a great stone altar over which a tall statue of Andraste looms. The room is flanked by inlets with statutes depicting the action of some Canticle, and the blank stone eyes of ten more Blessed Brides give the two elves an audience. The heavy wooden door is shut for privacy, and the two stand far up the aisle and speak in hushed voices.

“I really don’t want to stay here any longer,” Lavellan says. They had convinced Deshanna to give them the map coordinates to Dirth Irassethan on the grounds that any people they sent not divulge information about Yhdris’s possible movements, but they are so mind-bogglingly remote she does not want to think of arranging for an agent to travel there right at this moment. Maybe she can have Solas arrange contact. Her whole body aches and she thinks it must be punishment for jumping onto roofs and into beds the prior day. “What now? We should put our resources towards tracking Dirth Irasseth, and reaching the site of Dirth Irassethan. What remains of the cult may be able to help us. Would you be able to employ your network at that?”

Solas does not respond to her question. “You can see what shall happen here. For all the rhetoric of hope and unity, Wycome is a city divided. One people harbors ages of resentment, and the other holds tight to fear.”

Lavellan does not like Solas’s smug and metered tone. “Don’t gloat about it,” she shoots back.

“The downfall of the elves of Wycome will not be something I celebrate,” he says. Almost flippantly he adds, “I am very sympathetic to your cause.”

“And what cause is that?”

“Freedom, of course,” Solas replies. “You grew up miserable among your people—the Dalish said they were free folk but you knew you were trapped. And say you left your People. What options would the great wide world have allowed you? Housework, hard labor, prostitution: these are the lots elves are permitted. Poor humans and even dwarves might dream of escaping their wretched stations by accruing wealth, but this world has a way of putting enterprising elves back down in their places. You might have kept your pockets full and your mind busy as a spy, smuggler, or mercenary, but that would not have pleased you either. Your whole life would have been spent in the shadows as those far less ambitious and intelligent than you walked proud in the light of the sun. In my youth I would have grown as sick with rage as you were your whole life before you happened upon our happy accident at the Conclave: indignity and oppression are forced upon elves. So now by your works in Wycome you seek to remove the limitations for those who come after you. I find that noble of you but I do not think that this world will allow your plans to come to fruition.”

Lavellan immediately jumps to the defense of her project, now a decade in the making. “The world is changing. Kenric has gotten more and more of his colleagues at the University of Orlais to take on elves as students. In Denerim the hahren of the alienage has been granted a lordship. Leliana has ordained elves as Mothers. Elves make up half the leaders of the Free Mages. If elves and humans can rule Wycome together without either party fucking it up—“ She shakes her head hurriedly, trying not to feel dizzy. “Deshanna understands the risks. I know she’s sick, but when she can’t work anymore Hellathen will take her place, and despite whatever she’s on now, she’s reasonable and she trusts me. If I take the time to explain it to her and get the city elves to back me up—and they will, they’re on the ground here, they have the most to lose—I can keep this right.”

“It is not your Keeper Deshanna’s retirement or passing that will doom the elves of Wycome—it will be your own. By the time the elves are bereft of your protection and guidance, the humans’ memories of the camaraderie forged during the War will have waned and given rise to an old and familiar animosity. And when that animosity waxes full into resentment and fear, there will come violence. This experiment has been charming, but humans have not and will not ever suffer a stronghold for elves and their savage faith. It is disguised with florid language about song, but Andrasteism is only slightly less proselytic and militant than the Qun.” Lavellan’s anger rises as Solas goes along. Yet she considers staying quiet and not starting an argument until Solas adds, “This all hypothetical, of course. I intend that my work be done long before that point, and perhaps it is kinder that—”

Lavellan snaps, “Oh, shut up. You know I can fix this, I—“ She does not need to prove or justify herself to Solas. “You know what? No. I’m really not about to take this from you of all people.”

“I am precisely the person to whom you should be listening.”

“Is that right?”

“Like you I had the best of intentions. Like you I thought I could right the greatest wrongs of the world. Look what end that came to! These people believe me to be some sort of monster. They perform rituals and give offerings to hide themselves from my gaze and presence. They pray at weddings that I not invade their marriage beds and before meals that they not find me in their stew! Like stupid dogs baying at their own shadows they cry ‘Dread Wolf!’ whenever they come up upon any of their miseries and hardships. I did all I could for the People and am a villain for it!”

“Have you ever thought for a moment that you might deserve to be hated? So what that you had the best intentions—you destroyed their world! So what if it was a horrible place? You burnt down their home and watched them die.”

“Intentions matter none, I know. But I had—“

“—no other choice? So what if you had no other choice: your hands are soaked in our blood, and you’re preparing to wet them again. Who in this world is supposed to love you for that?” At the end of the question, her voice rises, catching and echoing in the space of the chapel.

“That was not my point. My actions had consequences I expected but did not desire. They will again have such consequences and I have come to terms with this. But so must you. The more time passes and the more clans gather here, the more elves will die when the inevitable Exalted March falls upon Wycome. The harder and longer you fight, the greater the tragedy will be and the more our people will turn to the Qun or to me against your institutions. You say I am unloved. Trust me—your efforts will not be rewarded, and you will not be thanked, or perhaps even forgiven. But go on with what you are doing. I may even help you how I can. Regardless of how long you choose to prolong your little experiment in the twilight of this world, I will be able to use the fall of the elves of Wycome to my own ends.”

“So everyone here is a tool to you. You’re a monster. You’ve convinced yourself that you’re not, but you’re no better than the Evanuris or Corypheus.”

“And how far are you from being the same? You can incentivize and counterbalance all you wish, but you cannot erase centuries of animosity and ideology. How far will you go to dominate the wills of thousands? How much blood will you allow to be shed before you admit your own ineptitude? At a time your optimism and determination were admirable. But now it seems that out of sheer stubbornness you lie to yourself, unwilling to accept that in the grand scheme of things, you will fail. You have always been unable to stand your own inefficacy.

“This is why you loathe me so greatly, and why you lust for me in equal measure—more than you ever did when I shared your bed at Skyhold.” There is a cold hatred in his voice with the observation. “You know now that I have come to take my rightful place amongst the gods of your childhood. You have no power over me.”

“Oh-ho, this again?” She is offended by all of what he has said, in whole and with each part. “I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re omniscient now, what since you know how I feel.”

The mockery irritates Solas. He steps towards her with steeled rage in his grey eyes as he continues, “I remind you of what you cannot do, what you cannot surmount, and that makes your skin at once crawl with disgust and flush with desire. So you moralize our positions when you are no different than me: a liar and a solipsist. You cannot lie to yourself and you want _so badly_ to submit—“

“—submit?! So you’re _the Qun_ now—“

“— _surrender_ ,” Solas corrects hurriedly, “but your foolish pride will never let you—“

“—hypocrite! You’re a hypocrite!” Lavellan feels her voice raising and fights to keep it down. “As long as I’ve known you you’ve valorized resistance. Yet now because my fighting might _inconvenience_ you, I should accept—”

“—you should because it is futile! You are as pitiable as you are is courageous! You know well I could see you dead right now if I wished—”

“—oh, then just _do it_ , Solas—”

“—and not with every drop of the tar-black spite that animates your dying frame could you change that—“

“—fuck you, _Fen’Harel_. Right now. Do it—“

“—just as you cannot change—“

—just as Lavellan prepares to implore her lover to kill her where she stands, the swish of an arrow whizzes past her ear and without seeing where it has landed she instinctively she turns to face its source. Kelleth stands at the doors of the chapel with the last bit of stealth powder dissolving away from his outline. He holds his bow at aim at the release and is standing dead still. In shock Lavellan wretches her attention from Kelleth to Solas and sees that an arrow hangs before him, inches away from his face. Like Kelleth’s body, the arrow is immobilized. It is stopped alongside Lavellan’s head and she sees the light blue of a barrier glint around it before it clatters and drops impotently to the floor.

A thousand terrified thoughts rush through Lavellan’s head. The door is open behind Kelleth. When had he come in? How long had it been like that? Lavellan sees impassivity float back over Solas’ face. The doors suddenly surge with a sharp energy as they swing shut behind the bowman, and the sound of a lock clicking rings through the quiet chapel.

Solas’s nose scrunches slightly in displeasure and he exhales a frustrated sigh. “Your friend here must have been tailing us from the Campgrounds,” he tells Lavellan.

“What did you do to Kelleth?” the Inquisitor asks upon noticing the rigidity of the Warleader’s form and the look of panic upon his face. Lavellan remembers Solas crushing the hollow bones of the circling jackdaws, of Solas leaving in his wake dozens of Qunari made corpses by hardly more than a blink. She cries in alarm, “You didn’t hurt him?”

“This paralysis spell works by a different mechanism so harmless that it was often taught, as I understand, in Circles for self-defense.” The air swirls with magic and Kelleth is lifted and dragged across the room, his feet less than an inch away from the ground as he is propelled forth by Solas’s will. Kelleth’s face is frozen in a contortion of fear and misery. Solas says to Kelleth, “I will free your mouth so you may speak. I ask that you spare us the headache and not scream—it will not save you. Why did you follow us?”

In his new freedom Kelleth insists, “Step away from her, monster! I’m sure she invited this on herself, but—“

Lavellan is mortified by Kelleth’s attempt to defend her from Solas. With the full force of anger and humiliation Lavellan demands, “—what were you doing following us?”

Despite his attempts to protect Lavellan, Kelleth is furious with her. “I knew something strange was going on with you. I knew it. And I overheard everything.” He looks to Solas hatefully. “She called you Fen’Harel. And you are, aren’t you?”

“Kelleth, are you serious?” Lavellan answers with a roll of her eyes. Kelleth is a religious nut and as her heart speeds in her chest she summons an air of incredulity. “Do I have to deal with both of you being fucking insane now?”

Kelleth does not buy into her fake bewilderment. “You brought him in to our camp, into our home! You know what sort of monster he is! He hates The People and he wants to destroy us. If he has his way, Arlathan will never be reborn.”

The sadness in Solas’s amusement is repulsive: “Certainly not by your hand.”

“You shut up!” Lavellan spits at the mage. The Inquisitor is already enraged and panicked without hearing Solas condescend. She turns from Solas to the statue-still Kelleth. The elf’s tattooed face is warped into an ugly scowl and Lavellan matches the expression with her own rich vitriol. “And you. You think that your stupid fantasy has a happy ending? We live in the world of the humans and I’d be surprised if half of them saw us as people. They can kill us and they will do it. You want to gather enough elves here to drive the humans out of Wycome? Good luck—every state in South Thedas will intervene to crush you. Have you ever met the Prince of Starkhaven? No, of course you haven’t. He’s been itching for years to start another Exalted March—he’ll lead every army in South Thedas to your gates to crush your heathenry before you can so much as declare your Elvish state. You’ll all be slaughtered in the streets, and half the survivors will be corralled by slavers and sold at market in Tevinter! Do you want that?”

Kelleth seems taken aback for a split second. “And you’d just let that happen? You would watch as your people are destroyed?”

“Oh,” Lavellan laughs with a mocking levity, “Were you banking on my support? I work for the Chantry!”

The Dalish man spits poisonously, “I see how it is now. You’re a greasy coward. Never again shall we submit, remember?”

What a stupid and empty slogan. Lavellan is enraged by its invocation. She plays the games she must to stay atop the world but she has never submitted to anyone. She never will submit to anyone. At least she tells herself that. Lavellan’s rebuttal to Kelleth’s hideous platitude comes up in a snarl as her nostrils flare. “The Dalish lived in the wilds hiding away like mice for a dozen generations and _I’m_ the coward for doing everything I can to help you people?”

“ _You people_!” Kelleth exclaims. He gives a hollow laugh and the shadows pool beneath his dark eyes. “Listen to that. You people. You don’t even see yourself as one of us! Where does your loyalty lie? With the Chantry? With your Dread Wolf? Or do you care only for yourself and your lust for power?”

“My loyalty is with the Inquisition and with the whole of Thedas,” Lavellan hisses, her shoulder drawing back as she squares herself with the frozen man. The room spins and threatens to rip itself from beneath her feet. She very suddenly feels unworthy of espousing any grand affinity for all people of the continent and the dissonance boils up into a threat. “Never mind what he,” she jabs a finger on her good hand towards Solas without breaking the hateful glare she holds on Kelleth, “says—“ she waves her arm out in front of her, livid energy pumping through her veins, “I will accept Wycome as lost the moment it jeopardizes my duty to protect this world!”

“They trust you.” Kelleth shakes his head to the extent he can, trembling in the hold. “The Keeper, Hellathen. Half the Clan idolizes you.”

Lavellan will not be guilted. “And the other half hates me. So what?”

“They deserve better than you,” Kelleth accuses. “If you had any decency you would go to them and admit that you brought Fen’Harel among them. Let me go so I can give them the truth!”

Seemingly made bored by Kelleth’s rage, Solas opines to Lavellan, “I imagine whatever he intends to tell your Clan is going to be…imaginative. At best, they’ll think him insane. At worst, it may incite some sort of panic among the superstitious of your lot.” He pauses and exhales a long sigh. To Kelleth Solas asks, “Did you tell anyone you were following us?”

Kelleth grimaces back. “I won’t betray any one of the People to you, scourge.” He has fear, panic, and a bitter vendetta in his glare and Lavellan knows what Solas’s identity means to someone who truly believes. In the legends, the Dread Wolf had out of sheer hatred for the People locked the Creators away and caused the fall of Arlathan. All misfortune visited upon the Dalish were inventions of the Wolf: long and hungry winters, scorched summers without rain, dead friends and dead mothers. For his own amusement the Dread Wolf had invited the pox that had decimated Kelleth’s Birth-Clan Tari. Kelleth is a devout follower of the Old Ways, and deeply serious in his faith—he knows the Dread Wolf is invited by sin and curse but spares no innocents when he comes around to feast.

The Inquisitor finds herself staring up at a carved inlet high in the wall where a gargoyle-like figure of Maferath twists himself in woe. Lavellan knows that story too: the Betrayer had given his wife over to the Tevinters because he envied and hated their Maker’s love for her and was blinded to her great mission. Lavellan knows how to get a real answer of Kelleth. Pushing silly myths from her mind, the Inquisitor meets the Warleader’s gaze. His dark almond eyes narrow. Jade heavy and dispassionate, Lavellan asks, “Kelleth, what’s the name of the city elf that hangs off of you?”

No answer comes.

“Brydin I believe,” Solas responds rather flatly after a long moment of Kelleth staring at them in a dumbfounded misery.

“He was at the Campgrounds late last night,” Lavellan observes. She continues at Kelleth, “You two must have spent the night together. Did you tell him where you were going when you left?”

A new sort of fear peaks into Kelleth’s expression. “What’s Brydin have to do with any of it?”

“I don’t know. It could be nothing. Or it could be something,” Lavellan says. Her stomach sinks when she sees Kelleth’s face contort miserably. The Warleader grinds his teeth as he strains to move his body. His muscles are unresponsive and do not twitch under his armor. The sight is pitiable. “Who knows you came to follow us, other than Brydin?”

“No one,” Kelleth insists. “I didn’t tell Brydin anything. Let him be!”

“I don’t believe you,” Lavellan says.

“Brydin was asleep in my hut when I left,” pleads Kelleth. “I woke early to run drills with the militia—that’s when I got the idea that I should follow you. I told three of my Armsmasters about the idea. And…and I ran across Hellathen. I told her I expected that you were up to something strange.”

The Inquisitor raises her brow and with her good hand brushes her hair from her forehead. “Hellathen knew about this? I can’t see her thinking it’s a good idea.”

With a resentful reluctance Kelleth admits, “…she told me I should leave you to your business.”

“You should have listened.” Lavellan cringes back when the voice comes in double: she and Solas spoke at once. She glances towards the mage furtively but cannot look solidly at him in the time before her attention is caught by a seething hiss from Kelleth. He believes she and Solas are one and the same, Lavellan realizes, either by union or domination.

“Let Brydin be!” Kelleth insists. He speaks straight to Solas, a plaintive desperation in his demand. “I told you the truth. Brydin knows nothing.” With each wavering cast of the candles’ orange gold, the light on his tattooed face falls to light up his aspect in misery and vitriol with each changing flicker. “I know who you are and the sort of things that bring you around. I’ve blasphemed and tread on sacred grounds, lied to lovers, been too quick to pull my knife. So you can take me,” he says, “but you don’t touch Brydin, no matter who you came here for! You _can’t_!” Kelleth’s voice cracks. Glossy tears well in the corners of the warrior’s eyes as he winces through gritted teeth and struggles to pull his rigid and deadened body free from the arcane hold. He is still fighting but in such a futile way.

Long moments are filled only with Kelleth’s labored breathing. Lavellan feels a hand upon her shoulder and she wrenches herself away from the grasp, even as Solas turns her his way. She nearly stumbles as she spins out on her tired and wobbly knees. He will not touch her again—not now, not in front of people, not ever. She is ashamed she gripped his hand in front of Deshanna, that Hellathen had come in on them embracing in the hidden vault. Solas is grim-looking and lovely and she is ashamed of letting him have her, ashamed of giggling and blushing for him. They are not one thing and they should not come together

As Lavellan’s lips and stomach burn, Solas asks her, “What do you wish to do?”

Kelleth opens his mouth to speak but after a glance from Solas his start is truncated and no further sound comes out. Out of some strange respect for him, Lavellan motions for Solas to follow her and leads him some feet from Kelleth to stand behind a seven-foot-tall stone Andraste looming over the chapel’s altar.

“You’re asking me?” A bewildered Lavellan asks in hushed whispers to Solas once in the shadow of the statue.

“He is Dalish—one of your people,” explains Solas. His voice is nearly but not quite as low as hers. What Lavellan at first thinks might be deference quickly shows itself as what must be derision: “You are the one with your people’s best interests at heart.”

The obvious course of action is to kill Kelleth. Lavellan rubs her eyes one before the other with her right hand as she thinks aloud, “If Kelleth telling the truth, he did let multiple people know that he was following us. Even if the elves here didn’t have all sorts of rumors about me…they would be suspicious of us. And even if we cover our tracks, this is going to ruin my reputation here.” Lavellan peers back around the statue to where Kelleth is held. His dark eyes are fixed in their direction and her stomach drops. “I don’t know. It would still probably cause problems but maybe we could just do it and immediately call the guard? That might come across better than a disappearance. We could say it was self-defense.”

“He did shoot an arrow at me,” Solas answers. “I suppose I could claim I reflexively threw fire when ambushed…Though the Guard may not react well upon hearing that someone died by magic on the premises. Free mages after all are still are regarded with fear.” Solas turns to peer around the statue himself. For a long moment he stares at Kelleth, who is bound voiceless and immobile like a rabbit in a trap who has long spent its last buzzing screams and wasting trembles. Kelleth would have wanted to die like big game, die fighting like a bear or a drake. “He is a good friend of yours—or was, at a time?”

“Sort of,” Lavellan says, caught off guard by the comment. Lavellan falters and admits awkwardly, “I guess rivals more than friends, maybe? We, uhm, used to mess around together when we were teenagers.”

Lavellan girds herself for some expression of distaste from Solas but craning slightly he only looks between the two other elves and gives a tired little hum. “You would rather avoid killing him,” he observes.

“Of course I would!” Lavellan spits at him. Solas has seen thousands of years and millions of deaths. She herself has seen so much bloodshed, so much war. The thought of killing Kelleth is harrowing to her. They had hunted together. Earned their vallaslin together. Kelleth is an idiot and an empty-headed firebrand but he is undoubtedly brave, undoubtedly noble in his own way. Lavellan finds herself hating him for it and a new strain of simpering loathing arises in her. The thought comes like a terrible echo: he is so admirable and so thoroughly pathetic.

Now Lavellan intends to kill Kelleth of convenience. She searches for other plans. She has killed in the heat of battle more times than she can count. She has executed people in calm and cold blood—but never because it was the easiest thing to do. She had trained at weapons with Kelleth, the two impassioned and unyielding teenagers staying at practice longer than any of the others in their Clan. She would master the unwieldy bastard sword she had stubbornly taken up and he would capture an unflagging, perfect precision. They leaned together as they drank in hollows. With their little band they explored ghost towns and forgotten ruins. Lavellan thinks of how much Kelleth loves Brydin, and how much Brydin must love Kelleth. She whispers, “But for Wycome, for Thedas, what other choice do I have?”

Solas grimaces as if he holds a dram of wormwood extract in his mouth and is unable to spit or swallow.

“What?” Lavellan asks. “You have something smart to say, I suppose?” She means to be vicious but it comes weakly.

“Your assessment of the consequences of killing him are…likely correct,” Solas says. He pauses a long pause, and when he starts again his words labored. He is not saying what he wants to say. “If we had time, we could stage some sort of accident for him, but that would be a distraction from our mission. Silencing those others—his brothers in arms—would be timely and has its own potential to draw suspicion.” He shakes his head and like an admission to a mother behind a confessional shroud he finally announces, quiet and staid, “It is important to you that you maintain the peace here. I could erase his memory of this encounter.”

That seems like such a small thing for such recalcitrance. “I thought only spirits could purposefully erase memories,” Lavellan asks, treading carefully with her words.

“You thought wrong.” The correction is blunt and as he goes on, Solas becomes dull and distant. “The powers of a spirit are not imitable in their nature, but sometimes may be emulated in their effects. These abilities in the hands of spirits are limited in many regards. Think of Cole—even if an act might be invasive or violent to its receiver, he could only manifest that magic when he acted of compassion. Furthermore, memories taken in the way I shall take these are not often destroyed, only held in the Fade. Cole’s magic had been part of his nature and is far…cleaner and faster than what I was proposing.” Orange candlelight fills the thin creases in his face during his long pause. “I shouldn’t have suggested this.”

“But you did.” Lavellan purses her lips with a frightful impatience.

Solas grimaces as he admits, “Yes, I suppose so.”

“You’re not revoking the offer?” Solas says nothing and Lavellan continues, “Will doing that hurt Kelleth?”

“No. I have the skill to remove and destroy the memories without inflicting any wider trauma.”

An uneasiness arises in Lavellan at the thought. Solas’s offer is too good to be true, and it is far too good for him to seem this dour. Is he playing some mind-game with her? That doesn’t matter. Lavellan draws a deep breath before turning away from Solas to walk around the statue back into the chapel’s aisle. Her feet fall heavy as she draws closer to Kelleth. “So. We’ve figured out what we’re going to do,” she says. Lavellan sometimes has made house-calls to the parents or spouses of dead Inquisition soldiers and her voice comes in much the same way.

Kelleth strains to speak and suddenly he can. He sputters bitterly, “So the Wolf has made up his mind about what to do with me.”

The Inquisitor’s nostril flairs. “No. I made up my mind.”

“As if there’s a difference. You’re his tool, his thing.”

“I am my own woman,” Lavellan insists with the vehemence of someone with something to prove. She is selfish and terrible in her own right and if she behaves how Solas wants, it is by her own volition. “Just listen to me. I can’t risk you going back to the Clan and running your mouth about any of this—because I can guarantee that the People will suffer if you do. One way to keep you quiet would be to kill you.” Kelleth grimaces, his eyes full of hate. “I don’t want that to happen. So Solas—“

“—say his real name. _Fen’Harel_ ,” Kelleth taunts. “Or can you not confront what you’ve done?”

She rolls her eyes at his pathetic rebellion. “ _Solas_ can remove your memory of the past fifteen minutes. It would be like you never heard any of this and you could go about your life. You won’t ever have to worry that us monsters will hurt Brydin or your lieutenants to cover our tracks. It’ll be easy.”

“You want me to abet your evil? I’m no coward, Adahlen. Not like you. So kill me,” Kelleth says. “But if you touch Brydin—I hope the both of you rot in the Void. You’ll deserve whatever torment you get!”

Lavellan closes her eyes. This is the easy way, she reassures herself. “Kelleth, I’m sorry. This is for the good of the clan,” she says. “For your father, and your men, and all the elves of Wycome, and for Brydin.” There is terror in Kelleth’s eyes, and when Lavellan turns to Solas there is a resentful misery in his. A pang of rage, panic and confusion flares inside Lavellan’s chest but she has already shown enough weakness. Even as her knees creak and wobble and her heart aches, the Inquisitor will remain steady and strong. Solas now stands beside her, and Lavellan looks to the man who has sworn to be her death and commands him, “We came to Deshanna’s office at half past ten. Remove all of Kelleth’s memories between then and now.”

* * *

“—look, he’s coming to.” The man laying on the floor of Wycome’s governmental building blinks and begins to pull himself upwards into a sitting position. Lavellan insists, “Don’t move, you could be hurt—“

“No, I’m…I’m fine,” Kelleth says from his place on the runner. The bright mid-day sun pours down through the windows on him and the air in the vestibule is light and clean. He runs his fingers through his straight dark hair and blinks a few times confusedly. “You two…what happened?“

“We found you passed out here. We didn’t want to move you, but we were getting worried.” Lavellan speaks softly and with concern as she crouches at his side.

“Thank the Creators I wasn’t on the stairs,” groans Kelleth. He grimaces and shakes himself a little where he sits. “I was, ah, coming up to talk to Keeper Deshanna. To brief her on the Warparty, and the…the parade?” He seems embarrassed and recalcitrant. He had come there to follow them.

“Calm down, it could make things worse...” Lavellan tries to sound concerned. Kelleth doesn’t remember anything. He doesn’t remember that she would have killed him.

From behind Lavellan, Solas asks, “Is this something you have had a problem with in the past?”

“No. It must be fumes. I came in through the door in the back gardens, and they’ve got all those cleaning solutions in the air, and then with the paint in the hallways…” Kelleth shakes his head and takes a deep breath in. “Here’s better. Definitely better. I think I’m going to need a couple of moments. Creators…”

The Inquisitor looks up at Solas, and he quickly averts his gaze. It seems a bad joke that so many times over, the world is dependent on the two of them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for sticking with this despite delays, all.


End file.
